


Gentleman Death

by shiromori



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Everything is still people, Gen, Hannibal is still Hannibal, Tokyo Ghoul AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 09:40:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8281325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiromori/pseuds/shiromori
Summary: While investigating a series of brutal murders in Baltimore, Will Graham comes face to face with a killer unlike any he's encountered before.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RomancebyFaye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RomancebyFaye/gifts).



The phone rang at six in the morning, precisely four hours after Will had finally managed to get to sleep. He fumbled for it blindly without raising his head from the pillow, and had to fend off inquisitive dog noses. If the phone hadn't roused them all, the pack would have dragged him up and out soon enough anyway, but he groaned at the loss of those extra few minutes of sleep. "Hello?" he mumbled with his eyes still closed, just letting the phone rest on the pillow next to his ear.

"We've got another one." The voice on the other end belonged to Agent Harris, and was curt even by his standards. Instantly, Will was awake and alert.

"A jogger found the body this morning. How soon can you be in Baltimore?"

Will was already up and moving, herding the dogs out the front door so they could do what they had to do. "An hour, hour and a half if I leave now."

"An hour," Harris said and ended the call. Will went back inside to throw on some clothes.

* * * *

Will looked down at the shoe. Adidas, white leather and pony hair. It had probably cost a couple hundred dollars. It looked brand new, like it had barely been worn. The foot wearing it now rested on the pavement three feet from the dismembered body of its owner, parts strewn about like a gruesome jigsaw puzzle. They weren't going to find all the pieces. They never did.

 _"I see you walking down the street, coming from the basketball court. I know you'll come this way. I've been watching you. It's dark and you're alone, but you're not afraid. You've done this a hundred times. You turn down the alley. You don't see me until I want you to. And then…"_ But no matter how long Will looked, the picture remained fractured. "How do I do it?"

He wasn't aware he had spoken aloud until another voice intruded on his thoughts. "This is the third one this month. No weapon. No witnesses." Harris had come to stand beside Will, and was looking down at the scene with his blue-gloved hands on his hips and a troubled frown on his face. "Just tell me. Is it him?"

'Him', without qualification, only ever meant one person. "The Ripper?" The Chesapeake Ripper was the One Who Got Away. Every time, they hoped for another chance at him while dreading that he'd give them one. "This isn't his style," Will said, without needing to think about it.

"The mutilation. The trophy taking," Harris argued, but Will only shook his head. "The Ripper is methodical. He's brutal, but controlled. His choices are aesthetic," he said and saw how Harris scowled at his choice of words. "This is… sloppy. It's impulsive."

"You're saying this wasn't planned?" Harris pressed. "The victim was torn apart. That takes time, Will. That takes tools."

"I'm saying that the act mattered more than the victim," Will countered, testing the truth of the words even as he spoke them. "The victim was just meat to be butchered. You're not going to find any connection between this one and the others, or the killer."

"Wrong place, wrong time? That's all you've got for me? That's not a lot to go on." Harris was angry. Not at Will, not per se. At the situation, at the death, at his own helplessness to do anything about it. But he couldn't lash out at those things. Will was more convenient.

"What do you want me to do, Harris? Guess?" Will asked with a touch of annoyance. "That's not why you asked me to come down here." There were those who would have said that was all Will ever did – guess and get lucky – but Harris didn't believe that. He'd stood by and watched too many times as Will slipped out of his own head and into someone else's. It wasn't something Will liked to have an audience for. He said it disturbed his concentration, but that was a lie. The truth was, it was too easy to slip under a killer's skin. It was harder, much harder, to claw his way back out again. The scepticism, Will could handle. What he couldn't take was how some of them looked at him afterwards with guarded apprehension, like he was infected by a second-hand madness.

"No, I asked you to come down here because I need some answers," Harris answered. "I need you to tell me what I'm not seeing."

Will sighed heavily. The salt-copper stench of blood filled his sinuses and made him dizzy. He felt a rush of phantom euphoria that wasn't his, and he shook his head to clear it. "There's no design, here. There's no message. He does it because he can… because he _likes_ it. He's not going to stop."

"Unless we stop him," Harris concluded grimly.

The techs had finished photographing the scene and the body was being packed up in too many carefully labelled bags. There was nothing more for Will to do here. But, as he went to duck under the cordon, he saw a man and woman in dove-grey trench coats standing on the other side across the street in front of a parked car, just watching. Crime scenes always attracted gawkers – the morbidly curious and bored people looking for thrills. Usually, a uniform ran them off. These two didn't look like sightseers. They were too quiet, too still. They didn't trade speculations or crane their necks to try to get a better look. The man was tall and broad, and he stood at casual attention with his hands behind his back, but it was the long, slim suitcase the woman carried that caught Will's attention. Big enough to conceal some heavy-duty tools. "Hey, has anyone talked to them?" Will called to a passing tech.

The man glanced in the direction of the two onlookers and then away. "Oh, they're ours."

"Ours?" Will repeated doubtfully, wondering why he'd never seen them before. And he was sure he hadn't. He might not socialize with his colleagues, but he remembered names and faces.

"Right. Some kind of special consultation. I don't know," the tech said vaguely, as if it didn't interest him much.

That made Will frown. Baltimore PD had called in the FBI when the bodies had first started piling up and they figured they had a serial killer on their hands, half fearing that the Chesapeake Ripper was on the prowl again, and half afraid that it was someone new. The Ripper had had his share of copycats, but thankfully none of them quite had his macabre flair or his skill for evading detection. As it stood, Will seemed to be the only one who wasn't ready to pin these new murders on him. It wasn't the popular opinion. It wasn't the convenient opinion. And if another team had been sent, it was because someone thought they weren't doing their jobs. If Harris was under pressure from the higher ups, it went some way further to explaining his frustration, and why he was pressing Will in turn.

"We're the BAU. Who could we possibly need to consult with?" Will said mostly to himself, and was unsurprised when the tech only shrugged.

For consultants, they didn't seem to be doing a lot of consulting. He was of half a mind to go across the street and talk to the pair, but before he had taken a dozen steps in their direction, the two were suddenly in motion, as if they'd received some kind of signal. Or, Will thought cynically, just that they had no intention of talking. They both got into the car. The suspicious suitcase went into the backseat not the trunk, Will noted, staying within easy reach. The windows were heavily tinted, but he got the distinct impression that he was being watched as the car pulled past him. It left him with an uneasy feeling that had transitioned into resentment by the time he got into his own car. He'd never had any patience for departmental politics. The work had to come first. When it didn't, people died. No amount of finger-pointing was ever going to change that.

* * * *

"What are we looking at?" Harris asked. The body's disjoined parts had been arranged as coherently as possible to approximate a human shape, but the harsh fluorescent lights glaring off waxy skin and bloodless pink flesh did nothing to make it look like a person. There was the head, still mostly attached, but Will didn't look at it. He'd heard some of the lab techs complain that Collins, the head pathologist, sometimes talked to the bodies. It helped him to remember, he said, that they were people and not just puzzles to solve. Will didn't need to be reminded.

"Right. So. We've got the same M.O. as the other two victims," Collins said. "Cause of death was a penetrating wound to the abdomen. The killer went in low and pulled up until he hit bone. Basically opened the guy up like a suitcase, rummaged around, and took what he wanted. No defensive wounds on the arms or hands. Whoever did this, the victim didn't know he was in trouble until the guy already had him."

Harris indicated a severed arm with a nod of his head. "But the dismemberment. That's new."

"Victim number two was missing fingers and her tongue," Will reminded him.

"But nothing like this," Collins said. "And I can tell you not all of it was done post-mortem." That prompted a softly muttered "Christ…" from Harris. "Normally, with amputations, you'll see fairly clean edges with distinct tool marks in the bone from whatever made the cut. But what we've got here looks like an avulsion. The radius and ulna were forcibly dislocated, and the lower arm looks to have been literally torn off. The other limbs are the same."

"He's getting bolder," Will observed. "Testing the limits of what he can do."

"You think he'll keep escalating?" Harris sounded disturbed.

"I think he's a predator learning his own strength, and he hasn't found it yet."

"You're not suggesting he did this with his bare hands," Collins interjected incredulously.

Will hadn't been, but he asked, "Could he have?"

"You see this kind of injury in car accidents and around heavy machinery. The amount of force required – "

"But could he have, if he'd wanted to?" Will pressed, as he imagined the killer's vicious satisfaction at this exercise of his own raw power.

"Maybe," Collins admitted very grudgingly, speaking tightly as though he had to pry the words from himself against his own better judgement. "If he'd used a saw or a knife to get started, the subsequent tearing might have disguised the marks, and with enough torque, he _might_ have been able to detach the limb. But you'd be looking for a big guy."

"Keep on it," Harris told him. "We need everything you can get on this guy."

"How bad is it?" Will asked later in Harris' office. Harris didn't pretend not to know what Will was talking about, but he didn't offer anything up, either. Will hadn't really expected him to.

"It's bad," Harris answered honestly. "It always is, when it gets messy like this. People get scared. They want answers. The pressure goes up. But that's the job. We wouldn't be here if we couldn't work under pressure."

Will made as if to go, but Harris stopped him. "Arrange to be in Baltimore for the next couple of days. I need you there." He pushed a manila folder across the desk. "Take a look at these when you have time," he said, but from Harris that meant 'make the time'.

Will took the folder with a promise to go through it. He almost made it out the door before Harris said, "And keep your phone on."

 

Will found a Motel 6 without too much trouble, and on his way, he swung by a drugstore for a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a four pack of disposable razors. The first thing he did, before he even threw his bag of purchases down on the bed, was call his neighbour Irene to look after the dogs. He apologised for the short notice, but it was almost always short notice with him, and neither she nor the dogs ever seemed to mind spending a few days together. He, on the other hand, would be spending the next few days in the company of crime scene photos and reports. Or worse.

He spread the contents of the folder out on the bed and sat himself in the centre of it all. Three victims. Two men and one woman, ranging in age from nineteen to thirty-three. One a student, one a waitress, and one a cab driver. They all screamed victim of opportunity to Will – the kid cutting through an alley, the waitress coming off a late shift, the driver picking up the wrong fare. Wrong place, wrong time, like Harris had said. But Will's gut told him it wasn't as simple as that. The killer had watched them long enough to know when and where they would be alone. These victims had been chosen, isolated from the herd like a lion picked out a straggling gazelle. They weren't people to him; they were prey. The first kill had been the cleanest, the organs removed, but the body otherwise left intact. The mutilations had gotten progressively worse, like the killer was revelling in it. He'd kept more pieces. First just the organs, then the waitress' tongue and fingers. And the latest victim… the latest, they were still piecing together. Will picked up the photograph of the waitress' hand. The index and middle fingers had been severed just below the first joint. The report suggested they might have been cut off with slip joint pliers, but Will looked at the bruised, scalloped edges of the wounds and something clicked.

_"I used my teeth."_

As clear as day, he saw himself, the killer, taking those slender digits between his teeth and biting down. He all but tasted the metallic wash of hot blood over his tongue. He imagined the soft crunch of cartilage, the sticky smack of raw flesh.

Setting the picture aside – both the physical copy and the more powerful mental one – Will fumbled for his phone in the pocket of his jacket, thrown carelessly across a chair hours earlier. He dialled.

"Harris." The man answered on the second ring, and Will knew that Harris had been waiting for it, praying for an epiphany.

Will said, "He's eating them."

* * * *

"Will, my office," Harris ordered almost as soon as Will walked in the door the next morning, before he even had a chance to take off his jacket. It wasn't unexpected, but Will would have preferred to fortify himself with coffee before being subjected to the barrage of questions he knew was coming. He'd handed Harris a hell of a headache last night. For all Harris sometimes treated Will like a magic eight ball that he could shake up for answers, he wasn't so complacent as to accept the answers he got without examination. That was something Will admired about Harris, even as uncomfortable as it was to be asked to explain a chain of reasoning sometimes so deeply intuitive that logic applied itself only retroactively. Harris' scepticism was never personal; it was professional, and it often served to help Will separate his own thoughts from the borrowed ones and to see objectively what he had only felt instinctively before.

Will knocked on Harris' door to announce his presence and entered without waiting to be asked. He stopped short when three heads turned towards the door instead of one. He recognized the two strangers in the room as the observers from the crime scene, the supposed consultants, and he froze, feeling as if he'd walked into an ambush.

"Close the door," Harris said, not with his usual brusqueness, which Will took to be the director's attempt at an apology he couldn't offer under the circumstances. Will did. He didn't sit and Harris didn't ask him to. "These are investigators Jack Crawford and Beverly Katz," Harris said by way of introduction. "And this is special agent Will Graham."

Crawford stood at the mention of his name. He was a big man and took up entirely too much space in the small office that felt suddenly more cramped than usual. Katz remained seated. One foot rested atop a long, slim suitcase. She took note of Will's title. "Special?"

Will grit his teeth, but answered levelly, "Technically, I'm not officially cleared for field work." That earned Harris a sideways glance from Crawford, but it was nothing they couldn't have found out on their own. In fact, Will was willing to bet that they'd already known and only wanted to see if he would try to prevaricate.

"But you were at the scene." That from Crawford, sharp and direct.

"I was, and at the previous two as well. Agent Harris asked me to consult," Will answered with the same unvarnished directness, and saw Crawford's eyes narrow ever so slightly, likely trying to determine if there was a barb concealed in Will's response.

"Is the BAU in the habit of consulting with instructors on ongoing criminal investigations?"

That had been aimed at Will, but it was Harris who snapped at the bait. "We're in the habit of using whatever resources are at our disposal. Special agent Graham is one of our best profilers."

"What is this about?" Will asked finally, not in any mood to be drawn into an interdepartmental pissing contest first thing in the morning.

"We specialize in cases dealing with cannibalism," Crawford answered with the pat delivery of a line he'd given a hundred times. "According to your profile, you say the killer is eating his victims. I'd like to know what makes you so sure."

Will could tell he was being fed a half-truth. What he didn't know was why. "If you were at the scene, you must have suspected already. Why ask me?" he said, his acerbic tone making his real message clear. _Don't try to play me_.

"Maybe I want a second opinion," Crawford replied equably, giving Will a level look that made him feel inexplicably like a petulant child, however unreasonable he knew that was. It made him want to prove that, social graces notwithstanding, he could be professional.

"Most glaringly, there were serious bite marks on the second victim that were initially overlooked," he began, mentally ordering all the arguments he'd originally planned to make to Harris.

"Bite wounds aren't uncommon in cases of sexual assault," Crawford interrupted to point out, but Will gave an impatient half shake of his head.

"That isn't what he wanted from her. And it wasn't just her. All three of the victims were missing parts, but never the same ones. This wasn't fetishistic. He isn't collecting, he's harvesting. He's already progressed from internal organs to flesh, and he's taking more each time."

"Got a taste for it," Katz murmured. "There's no substitute." Crawford gave her a disapproving look at which she only twitched her shoulders in a little shrug that didn't look particularly apologetic.

"He may not know we're on to him. He may not care," Crawford said.

"Are we, though?" Harris asked, but Will had the unsettling impression that Crawford hadn't been talking about the BAU.

Harris continued, "Bottom line is, we still aren't any closer to knowing who this guy is. We're down to knocking on doors, looking for anyone who saw or heard anything. We could already have questioned him. We wouldn't know."

"Hiding in plain sight," Katz remarked, but Will recalled the slaughterhouse scene in the alley.

"No. He's done hiding."

"We'll know soon enough," Crawford said with grim certainty.


	2. Chapter 2

There was a 7-eleven a block from Will's motel. He knew this because he had been subsisting on their vacuum sealed sandwiches for almost a week now – namely because it was the only place open at two in the morning when he realized that he'd forgotten to eat again. The clerk slouching behind the cash was the same lanky, stoop-shouldered young man Will saw every night. His nametag said 'Trevor'. Tonight, he was reading one of the trashy tabloids lined up by the cash. 'BALTIMORE BUTCHER STRIKES AGAIN' the aggressive red headline read. He put it down when Will came up to the cash with his usual ham and cheese. "Excellent choice, sir," he said smartly, trying for a joke.

Will didn't smile. He fished in his pocket for a couple of crumpled bills and flattened them on the counter. "You shouldn't read that garbage," he said.

"It says he got the last one close to here. You should be careful going home," Trevor said, sounding more excited by the prospect than actually concerned. He'd probably be telling all his friends tomorrow how there'd been a murder near his work, relishing that little thrill of danger from a safe remove.

Will could have told him that most serial killers operated within a ten mile radius of their homes. He could have said that there was a good chance the killer had bought a copy of the exact same sensationalist rag the clerk was reading and was getting off on it. Instead, he just grabbed his sandwich and said, "Yeah, thanks."

"Hey, you want a coffee?" Trevor asked with a jerk of his shaggy head in the direction of the dispensers. "I gotta dump it anyway."

"You make it sound so tempting," Will answered wryly, but his standards – not sky-high to begin with – lowered on a schedule of irregular meals and snatched sleep.

"Help yourself. Only, um, you want to keep an eye on the door for me for a couple of minutes? Have to take out the trash."

Ah, so it was good old-fashioned bribery. "Sure, I can do that," Will said and Trevor flashed him a crooked-toothed grin.

"Thanks, man. Be right back."

Will wandered over to the coffee bar. It was stained and sticky with spilled coffee. He poured himself a dark mountain roast and ignored the flavoured creamers and syrups. A minute became five minutes and he started to wonder if he'd been suckered into standing around while the clerk ducked out for a smoke break. He was considering unwrapping his sandwich when Trevor came stumbling back inside. He was wild-eyed, cursing a continuous high-pitched stream of, "Oh shit, oh shit, oh fuck," and turning in circles as if he didn't know which way to go.

"What's the matter?" Will asked with a frown, not sure if he should also be alarmed.

At the sound of Will's voice, Trevor whipped around as if only just remembering that he was there. He caught hold of Will's arm urgently, making him jerk and spill hot coffee over his hand and the floor. "Dude! You're a cop, right?"

"Something like that," Will answered, because it was easier than explaining. "Why don't you take a deep breath and tell me what's going on?"

"I, uh… I think there's a dead guy in the dumpster."

"Where?"

"Around the back. There's like a gate, you know, so raccoons and shit don't get in. It was open. Sometimes it doesn't latch right, so I went to look, and…" Trevor swallowed heavily, like he was fighting down his stomach. "Yeah."

"Did you touch anything?"

"Fuck, no!"

"All right, calm down," Will said, gently extricating his arm from Trevor's panicked grip. "I want you to stay inside and call the police. I'm going to go take a look." 

Will had a good idea what he was going to find, but something about the scene bothered him. The killer had never made any attempt to hide a body before. They'd always been found out in the open, albeit in somewhat sheltered locations. Of course, it was always possible that this one was unrelated. Unfortunately, there was no shortage of run-of-the-mill muggings and murders in Baltimore.

The service alley was narrow, lit only by a sulphurous yellow light that ticked and flickered erratically. It stank sweetly of the residue of rot. The dumpsters themselves were fenced off and the door of the enclosure hung open on loose hinges. Hoisting himself up on the edge, Will peered down into the gloomy depths of the dumpster, but he saw nothing but the indistinct lumps of garbage bags. He let himself drop back down to the ground and was debating trying to use his phone as a flashlight when he heard the back door open and close.

"I told you to stay inside," Will told the clerk, but he wasn't entirely surprised that he'd been ignored. "I don't see anything. Are you sure you – "

"He's not there now," Trevor interrupted with nothing like the shaken manner of before. He'd come outside and was standing within arm's length of the fence.

"What do you mean?" Will asked and Trevor only snickered in response.

"You think this is some kind of joke?"

"He's not there now. Not yet. But he will be." Trevor grinned and Will felt his skin prickle with foreboding. 

Reflexively, he put a hand to his gun, and in the moment he moved, Trevor moved too. He rushed forward to close the distance between them before Will could bring up the gun, faster than Will would have thought possible. With no time to hesitate, he fired off two shots, but the full weight of the other man's body struck him, slamming him back against the dumpster with a force that made it groan hollowly. Fire lanced his shoulder and his fingers spasmed and went slack. The gun fell to the ground with a clatter. _I've been stabbed_ , he thought with adrenalin-fuelled clarity. He looked down, expecting to see a knife protruding, but what he did see made no sense to his eyes – not a blade, but a fleshy red-scaled column nearly as thick around as his wrist. It twisted slowly, nauseatingly in his wound and Trevor tore it free. It was not a weapon at all, but some kind of tentacle-like appendage – one of several that sprouted nightmarishly from his back and wove threateningly like vipers ready to strike. The one coated in Will's blood, Trevor raised to his lips, licking it with a grin like a child sucking watermelon juice from his fingers on a hot day. His eyes were night black, inhuman, with points of mad red that burned like embers.

Will slumped to the ground. The pain in his shoulder went from fire to ice as the blood welled up fast and he tried to staunch it ineffectively with his other hand. His rational mind reasoned that there had to have been something in the coffee, that there was some other explanation, but his body told him that this was no hallucination. The serpentine tentacles coiled themselves around his arms and legs and lifted him up, crucified in the air before his attacker. Will twisted and fought, but couldn't contend with the incredible strength of their grip. In his mind flashed an image of the Butcher's last victim, torn limb from limb in an alley, and he felt his blood go cold at the revelation.

"You get it now, right?" Trevor said conversationally. "So, am I everything you expected? I'm guessing not. But don't worry. You won't have very long to be disappointed." The tentacles tightened and pulled, stretching Will's arms and legs to the agonizing limit. Will felt the muscles in his damaged shoulder tear further and it wrenched a hoarse shout of pain from him that made the clerk laugh.

"Ready? I'm gonna make a wish," he said. Will felt the grip on his limbs tighten in preparation, but the next moment the tentacles that bound him in their monstrously strong grasp seemed to erupt with jagged crystalline spikes like shards of broken red glass. Trevor gave a cry of shock and pain and turned sharply. Will was thrown free, and he hit the ground hard and rolled. His head struck concrete and light exploded behind his eyes.

"You…" he heard Trevor say, the word saturated with dread.

Will tried to see what had diverted his attacker's attention, but his vision swam. A dark shape moved between him and the light. Colour bled out from it like the spread of red wings, and then everything went black.

* * * *

Will awoke, struggling against the memory of red-scaled tentacles, but it was only soft white sheets that constricted him, tangling around his twisted body. He was in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room that was not nearly stark or impersonal enough to be a hospital room. A sliver of rosy sunlight filtered in through a window hung with heavy crimson drapes, and Will didn't know if it was rising or setting. Beside the window was a chair, and in it a man sat dozing with his chin on his chest. Will didn't recognize him at all, but it was not the same man who had attacked him. How long had he sat there watching Will sleep before drifting off himself, and more importantly, why? Will's head felt foggy, his limbs heavy and sluggish, as though sleep was reluctant to release him entirely, but he forced himself to alertness by pure will. He tried to push himself up into a sitting position against the headboard, but his injured shoulder refused to cooperate, making him gasp at the hot, pulsing pain that felt as if he was being stabbed all over again.

The dozing man's head came up and his gaze cut immediately to Will. "You're awake," he said, his voice softened by sleep and an accent that Will couldn't quite place.

"Where am I?" he tried to ask, but the words caught in his dry throat and his voice cracked. The stranger rose and Will braced himself, but it was only to fetch the glass that had been resting on the bedside table. He offered it to Will.

"It's only water," he said when Will hesitated to take it, and the gentle assurance of his tone made Will feel vaguely guilty for having distrusted it. He took the glass with his good arm, took a careful sip, and then downed the rest in big gulps when he realized how thirsty he was. He tried to raise his free hand to wipe his mouth and winced when his shoulder protested the movement. It was bandaged, the dressing clean and neatly made. 

"Did you do this?" Will asked, and the man nodded once. "You changed my clothes," Will said, because he wasn't wearing his own. His shirt and jacket had been removed and he was dressed in an unfamiliar pair of cotton pyjama pants that were nicer than anything he owned. He wasn't sure how he felt about being undressed and tended to while he was unconscious.

"Your clothes were bloody. I thought you would be more comfortable in something clean," the man said. "I'm afraid I couldn't save your shirt, but you were lucky. Your wound wasn't as serious as it appeared. It missed the major artery and the tendons. I was able to stitch it, but you should be careful how you move it while it heals. You wouldn't want to exacerbate your injury."

"You're a doctor?" Will asked, to which the man nodded again. 

"A surgeon, in fact."

Will absorbed that information slowly. "But this isn't a hospital. Why isn't this a hospital?"

At that, the doctor pressed his lips together as if searching for the most delicate way to phrase his response. "I found you unconscious in the street. You had obviously been involved in some kind of altercation, but I wasn't sure of the circumstances. It occurred to me that – " he paused significantly " – you might not welcome certain questions being asked. And since your injuries were not beyond my ability to treat…"

Will's brows rose incredulously. "You weren't sure if I was involved in a criminal assault, so you brought me to your _house_?"

The doctor's lips twitched in a little movement that was too slight to interpret as either a smile or a grimace. "I was reasonably confident of my ability to overpower a one-armed man if the need arose."

"Fair enough," Will conceded.

"Nevertheless, if you hadn't woken today, I would have taken you to hospital."

"What do you mean, _today_? How long have I been out?" Will asked, voice rising a little in alarm. "I need my clothes. I need my phone." He tried again to sit up, to swing his legs over the side of the bed, but a rush of light-headedness made him sag back against the pillows.

The doctor made a gesture for Will to lie back down. "You've been asleep for a day and a half. Your body has been through a lot. Don't try to push it too fast," he said. "I'll bring you your things."

While the doctor went to retrieve his belongings, Will examined his surroundings, his eyes roaming around the room from curiosity to curiosity. The fireplace drew his eye first, set in a natural stone accent wall directly across from the large bed. It was clean, but soot-blackened and had clearly seen use. Will would have expected it to be only for show. And there was a strangely show-like quality to the space. Looking around, he saw works of art on display, curios perched on every available surface, and even, tucked away in an alcove, what looked like a set of Japanese armour that he was willing to bet wasn't a reproduction. What he didn't see were personal effects – no books on the nightstand, no comb or cufflinks on the dresser, no slippers by the bed. Not so much as a stray sock. It was as if everything had been carefully arranged to create the illusion of a living space in which no one actually lived.

The doctor returned, then, carrying a small black leather case and a pile of neatly folded clothing with Will's watch, wallet, and phone sitting atop it. "I was able to launder some of your clothing, but unfortunately, as I said before, your shirt was ruined. I hope this will do." He unfolded a v-necked navy blue sweater and laid it out on the bed for Will's inspection. 

Will reached out a hand to touch it. The wool was light and impossibly soft with a subtle diamond weave. "You really don't have to do that," he said. It felt like imposing, though he recognized that the sentiment was ridiculous given that he was already wearing the man's pyjamas.

The doctor brushed off the protest with a smile. "I can hardly leave you half dressed. Though before that, if you'll permit me, I would like to have a look at your wound. The dressing should be changed."

Ah, so that was what the case was for. "Thanks, yeah," Will said, because the doctor had been looking after him the whole time. It seemed silly to get weird about it now just because he was awake. "How does it look?" he asked when the doctor had carefully lifted the tape and gauze.

"You have a terrific bruise. I don't see any sign of infection, but in the case of any stabbing, a tetanus shot is recommended."

Will remembered feeling the… the tentacle twist in his shoulder, sinuous and horrifically organic, like a taloned finger digging into his flesh. "I don't think that'll be an issue," he said.

"It's your decision, of course," the doctor replied too smoothly to entirely mask his disapproval, "but if you experience stiffness or spasms in your neck or jaw, or difficulty swallowing, you should go to hospital immediately."

"Noted."

Will sat still while the doctor cleaned his wound and reapplied the dressing. "This isn't your first time," the doctor observed and, at Will's confused look, elaborated. "Scar tissue. It looks old. It's healed well."

"Mostly, yeah," Will said. The doctor's answering silence was telling. Will could practically hear the second thoughts formulating, and so he added, "It happened back when I was a cop in New Orleans."

"You're a police officer?"

"I was. Now I'm… well, it's complicated." Will gave a soft, self-deprecating little laugh that came out sounding more tired than amused. Mercifully, the doctor didn't ask him to uncomplicate it. He said, "You know, it occurs to me that I didn't ask you your name."

"It's Hannibal," the doctor replied with a tolerant smile. "Hannibal Lecter."

"Dr. Lecter," Will repeated. "I'm – "

"Will Graham," the doctor supplied before Will could, and gave a nod towards Will's wallet resting on the bed between them. "Your ID. Nothing appears to have been stolen, but then I have no way to be sure."

"It's all here," Will said without needing to check. The Butcher wasn't interested in money. He didn't work that way. He didn't work like any killer Will had ever seen, and what he _had_ seen… In the sober light of day, it seemed like a nightmare of such brutal vividness that it clung to his waking consciousness and refused to be dispelled.

He picked up his phone. The screen was cracked, but it turned on when he thumbed the power switch. It notified him immediately, with an irate buzz, that he had seven new messages. One of them was from Irene, letting him know that the dogs were getting along fine, but the other six were from an increasingly displeased Harris, wanting to know where the hell he was and why the hell he wasn't answering his phone.

"I'd better call my boss before he puts out an APB," Will muttered, but more seriously, he said, "I need to make a report. Technically, you're not a witness, but it would be helpful to have your side of things." Belatedly, he added, "That is, if you don't mind," because the doctor had inconvenienced himself more than enough already for Will's sake.

"Not at all," Hannibal answered graciously. "I'll gladly provide whatever assistance I can."

"There is one thing," Will said. "My gun. I dropped it at the scene. You didn't happen to pick it up, did you?"

Hannibal's carefully neutral expression told Will that he had. Under the circumstances, Will couldn't entirely blame him for hanging on to it. Inviting a stranger into your home was taking a chance. Inviting an armed stranger into your home was crazy. The turn of his thoughts must have been evident to Hannibal who said, with a trace of contrition, "I didn't intend to keep it from you."

"No, thanks for looking after it," Will said, and more self-consciously, "Thanks for looking after me."

That brought another smile to the doctor's face. "My pleasure," he said, and sounded as if he actually meant it.


	3. Chapter 3

_I'm fine. Long story. On my way. Will explain._

That was the text that Will had sent Harris. There'd been no response. Harris was probably saving it all up for when he got there. Will was hoping the hole in his shoulder would buy him a pass. He'd promised an explanation, but he had no idea what he was going to say. He didn't trust his own truth.

Since Will's car was still in the parking lot of the Motel 6, Hannibal drove. Will had suggested that the doctor just drop him off, but Hannibal declined, stating that Will shouldn't be driving while taking painkillers. And Hannibal had given him some nice painkillers along with the antibiotics. He dozed off and on through the drive with his head resting against the passenger side window until, with a light touch on his uninjured shoulder, Hannibal said, "We're here." He'd pulled up in front of the field office.

" 'm awake," Will said, more to convince himself than Hannibal.

"You should be resting," Hannibal told him, not for the first time.

"I've been resting for two days."

"You were stabbed."

As a counter-argument, it was a good one, but Will said, "Yeah, I was. And the sooner we catch the guy who did it, the less chance there is that someone else won't be so lucky."

Hannibal bowed his head in defeat, but Will knew he hadn't changed his opinion. Will would even concede that Hannibal wasn't wrong. He really wasn't in any shape to be jumping right back into the deep end. Despite what he'd said, he was exhausted, the pain was starting to break through the pleasant numbness of the drugs, and he hadn't even been able to pull on his borrowed sweater without Hannibal's help. But he didn't have the luxury of choosing to walk away now. Not knowing what would happen if he did.

 

"Don’t you ever pull a stunt like that again," Harris said when Will came into his office, but the lecture cut itself short when Hannibal came in at his heels. Harris' thunderous gaze shifted from Will to the doctor. "And you are?"

"Part of the long story," Will answered before Hannibal could.

"I want to hear it. All of it. Starting with where you've been for the last two days."

Will did his best to tell it, though the details seemed hazy now. It was hard to recall the clerk's face. All he could picture were the malevolent red eyes, the alien appendages that belonged more to nightmare than reality. "He must have drugged me somehow. Some kind of hallucinogen in the coffee. I don't know. But he was our guy. I'm sure of it."

Throughout Will's accounting of the attack, Harris had remained silent, a deeper and deeper frown furrowing his brow. "That's all you remember?" he asked at length, and Will gave a frustrated sigh.

"Look, I know how it sounds. But it fits, Harris. I didn't make him. Not until it was too late. This wasn't him trying to cover his tracks. He chose me for one reason. He wanted me to know he was the better hunter."

Harris' disquieted frowning didn't abate. For several moments, he didn't reply, and when he did, it was to say, "Stay here."

When the door had closed behind the director, Will scrubbed a hand over his face. "Fuck, here comes the psych. eval."

"You're not crazy, Will," Hannibal said with reassuring conviction. "You've just been through a traumatic experience. Your body and mind are still trying to cope."

"Can I get that in writing?" Will asked dryly, but before Hannibal could respond, Harris returned, accompanied by investigators Crawford and Katz. The door was shut and the click of the lock being turned seemed ominous in the tense, expectant silence.

"Agent Harris said you were attacked. The story was a little garbled. You want to give it to me again?" It was phrased as a request, but Crawford's eyes bored into Will as if they could dig the truth out of him.

"I don't have anything to add," Will answered. There was a small stylized pewter dove with spread wings pinned to Crawford's lapel, and Will fixed his gaze on that, avoiding those prying eyes.

"Then let me," Crawford replied unexpectedly. "This attack on you confirms a suspicion we've had for some time now. But, to be sure, I'd like your permission to examine your wound." It was another demand masquerading as a request.

Will nodded his reluctant agreement, but Hannibal spoke up. "Is this necessary? The wound is deep. It should be exposed as little as possible to minimize the risk of infection."

"I'm afraid it is, doctor," Katz answered in a more conciliatory tone than Crawford had used. To Will, she said, "I'll be gentle."

That meant removing his sweater, which Will struggled to do one-handed. He did not ask for help. Katz unwrapped the spica. "Excuse me," she said when she had to put her arms around him to do it. She gently probed at the stitches in his shoulder and at others she found on his back. "What are these?" she asked, running a finger alongside them.

Will, who'd had no idea they were there, couldn't say, but Hannibal answered, "A minor laceration. It may have come from the attacker or something else at the scene. It wasn't the primary concern."

"Nothing else? No bites?" Katz asked.

"No, nothing apart from the expected bruises and abrasions."

Katz gave a small _hmph_ that sounded like disappointment. Turning to Crawford, she said, "The wound's been irrigated and stitched, and probably cleaned since then. I don't think I'm going to be able to get a trace."

"A trace of what?" Will asked, tired of being talked around.

Crawford and Katz exchanged a glance across Will's body.

"Understand that what I'm about to say does not leave this room, and I will enforce that silence if necessary," Crawford spoke so sternly that Will didn't doubt the sincerity of the threat. He only nodded mutely, his mouth gone dry.

At Will's side, Hannibal was sharp-eyed, silent and still. Crawford's gaze turned to him, and the doctor's chin came up ever so slightly, as if daring the man to try to eject him from the room. "I'm a doctor," he said. "I understand matters of confidence."

"This goes a little beyond that," Crawford said with what almost sounded like dry amusement, but he continued. "What you encountered, Agent Graham, was what we call a ghoul. They're indistinguishable by sight from normal humans, but their physiology differs greatly from ours. They subsist on human flesh."

"This is a joke," Will said blankly, but in his mind's eye, he saw a grinning mouth lick his blood from a claw.

"What you saw wasn't a joke," Crawford said, "and it wasn't a hallucination. Ghouls have an RC count many times higher than the average human. They're able to store up those cells and, more importantly, to express them as a weapon – a specialized organ called a bracchium that they use to hunt. There are various types adapted to different styles of predation, but the one you described was a vitis type."

Katz said, "If I'd been able to examine your wound before Dr. Lecter treated it, I might have been able to lift RC cells from it and identify the ghoul we're looking for." Her tone was not accusing, but Will sensed Hannibal stiffen beside him.

"My priority was to preserve life, Ms. Katz, not evidence," the doctor said crisply.

"Well, that preservation might have cost others," Crawford said. 

The high-handed reply provoked a curt retort from Will. "So has your secrecy."

"You of all people, Agent Graham, should understand why we've chosen not to make this common knowledge," Crawford said. "If the public knew that there were apex predators camouflaged among the populace, there would be a panic."

"They already know it. They just don't know we've got competition for the title."

"Look, I've got a job to do, the same as you," Crawford said bluntly. "I think you can help me do it. I can't catch this guy without your help, and you can't take him down without mine."

"And your cannibalism expertise?" Will asked dryly.

Crawford took the hint. "All right. Cards on the table. I'm not FBI – not technically – but you know that. Investigator Katz and I work for the Counter Ghoul Commission. Our departments have cooperated in the past to the benefit of both. But here's the thing. Your average ghoul is anywhere from four to seven times stronger than a human being. They heal in a fraction of the time. You could put a dozen rounds into one and they'd keep on coming. The CGC know how to fight these things. We have tools you don't have. But they can see us coming. They won't see you."

"He knows my face," Will pointed out.

"But you know his," Crawford countered. "That's all we've got right now."

"I can't, in conscience, recommend that Will continue to participate in this investigation," Hannibal said then when Will would have relented. "He needs time to rest and recuperate, or he risks losing the full use of his arm."

"Time is of the essence here, doctor," Crawford said, but Hannibal didn't back down.

"I understand that, but you have other resources, and Agent Graham will be more of an asset to you when he is at his best."

Harris spoke up to add his support then. "If the Butcher sticks to his pattern, we've got a week at most before he'll make a move. Take a few days to rest up. We can spare you."

"Agent Harris, I really can't – " Crawford started to protest, but Harris cut him off.

"Will is my personnel and I'm putting him on medical leave." To Will, he said, "Get your strength up. Come back ready for a fight."

 

"Was that true, what you said about my arm?" Will asked when they were back in Hannibal's car again, driving along the Northern Parkway.

"It is a possibility," Hannibal said carefully, "but not one I consider likely."

"So you lied to the director of the BAU?"

"I presented a worst case scenario."

"Uh-huh," Will said, but secretly, he was relieved. He'd already taken a knife to the shoulder once, and considered himself lucky that it had healed and left him with only the occasional stiffness to deal with. Part of him hadn't expected to be so lucky a second time. "Well, it's thanks to you. If you want to drop me off at the motel, I promise to take some aspirin and fall into bed."

Hannibal's quick sideways glance was mildly disapproving. "I presented a worst case scenario to Agent Harris, but that in no way means that there could not be complications. At this stage, I would prefer that your condition be closely monitored by a doctor."

"Still trying to convince me to go to the hospital?" Will said, not sure if he was more amused or resigned to Hannibal's persistent hinting. But Hannibal surprised him.

"Actually, I was going to suggest you come home with me."

"You're kidding," Will said, but Hannibal was not discouraged.

"I am a licensed surgeon. I treated your wound initially. There's no reason why I should not continue to do so."

"You don't owe me anything," Will protested in embarrassment, at which Hannibal only smiled.

"Call it professional pride if that makes it easier. I take my work as seriously as you do yours."

"Thanks," Will said because there was no graceful way to refuse, and if he was honest, he didn't want to.

Would it be so terrible to let someone else take care of him for once?

* * * *

Hannibal didn't have a guest room, Will discovered. The bed he'd first woken up in had been Hannibal's own, and Hannibal insisted that he use it again. "I'm not going to kick you out of your own bed," Will said, but Hannibal brushed off his protest.

"I've never needed much sleep – a quirk that stood me in good stead during my residency. There's a daybed in the salon that will suffice. It's more important for you to get your rest."

But, despite Hannibal's sacrifice, Will didn't get much sleep. In his dreams, he was in a dark place that melted in and out of being the alley and no place at all, an endless corridor and a directionless void in which there was nowhere to run. Red-scaled tentacles caught and held him. They pierced his body everywhere, burrowing under his skin, down through his flesh, worming their way in amongst his organs. He felt their hungry pulse inside him, keeping time with his stuttering heart. His vision swam blood-red.

Will awoke to the sun seeping in through the crimson curtains, staining the room red. His shoulder had stiffened up during the night and it rewarded all but the most cautious movements with a hot flare of pain that made Will grit his teeth against it. He swallowed the painkillers Hannibal had left on the nightstand for him dry and decided he wasn't up to wrestling with his sweater. The smell of coffee brewing lured him downstairs and he followed his nose to the kitchen. Hannibal was there, already dressed for the day, and fiddling with the most elaborate coffee maker Will had ever seen. He looked up when Will walked in. His eyes took in Will's bare-chested state and, belatedly, he offered a smile. "Good morning."

"Now I feel like a slob," Will said ruefully, crossing his good arm across his chest.

"Hardly," Hannibal said. "If I had been thinking, I would have lent you a few button-down shirts."

"It's all right," Will said, accepting the cup of coffee that Hannibal slid across the counter to him. "I have a spare back at the motel. I'll have to go turn in the key. I can pick up my stuff then." He took a sip of coffee and it slid like warm velvet over his tongue, rich and dark and bracingly bitter. He almost made an embarrassing sound. "This coffee is amazing."

"You looked as though you could use it," Hannibal said, and Will winced.

"That bad, huh?"

"Not a morning person?" Hannibal asked with a certain amused sympathy.

"Normally. I didn't sleep well." Will raked a hand through his tousled hair in an attempt to look less sleep-rumpled. "Bad dreams," he admitted.

"Perhaps that's to be expected, considering what you've seen and learned in the past few days."

"What about you?" Will asked, because Hannibal's reality had been recently reordered right alongside his, and the doctor seemed to be taking it in stride. "No monsters invading your dreams?" It didn't occur to him until after he'd asked that the question might be too personal.

"My monsters are old and tired," Hannibal answered freely. "As a child, I remember suffering nightmares that would wake me screaming, but I seldom remember my dreams these days."

"Right. Well, I'll try to keep the screaming to a minimum," Will said, and Hannibal smiled encouragingly.

"I hope so for your sake, but don't concern yourself for mine."

Hannibal made them breakfast. Will watched him grill apples and slices of black pudding, and scramble eggs with a few ingredients he didn't even recognize that smelled incredible. He didn't know how Hannibal managed that level of motivation or coordination first thing in the morning, but he was impressed as hell. When it was served, Will poked curiously at the blood sausage on his plate. "Try it with the apple," Hannibal suggested, and Will did. The tart sweetness of the apple and the savoury fatty sausage complemented each other better than he had expected. It didn't taste of blood. The eggs were fluffy, moist and buttery.

"This is delicious," Will said appreciatively. "I've been scrambling my eggs wrong."

"Hirn mit Ei is a simple and popular Austrian dish. Scrambled eggs with calf's brains," Hannibal said, and Will's fork stopped on its way to his mouth. It hovered there a moment and then Will took another bite. He was enjoying it. It would be silly to turn up his nose at the food now that he knew what he was eating, and rude after Hannibal had gone to the trouble of making it for him.

Hannibal saw the hesitation, and Will judged correctly that the doctor would have been offended if it had continued any longer. He said, "It's good. I just didn't think people ate stuff like this anymore."

Hannibal chewed and swallowed a bite of his own. "The American diet is terribly wasteful. Any part of an animal, right down to the bones, can be delicious if prepared properly. Organ meat in particular is rich in both nutrients and flavour."

"Mmn," Will said around another mouthful, and Hannibal gave a small self-conscious laugh.

"I don't mean to lecture you. I'm very particular about what I eat."

"That's not a bad thing. I'm probably not particular enough," Will said, thinking of how often he'd been accused of feeding his dogs better than he fed himself.

"Perhaps I'll change your mind," Hannibal said with a smile.

After breakfast, Hannibal checked Will's stitches and changed the dressing. "I see some swelling," he observed. "How's the pain?"

"It was bad when I got up, but it's all right now. Itches a little."

"It will as it heals," Hannibal said. "There are some exercises that can help with the stiffness."

"I remember," Will said unenthusiastically, but Hannibal went through them with him anyway, gently manipulating his arm into the proper positions. Afterward, his shoulder felt looser, the pain receded to a nagging ache that he could push to the back of his mind and ignore. He even felt ready to tackle the sweater again, but Hannibal gave him a blue-green button-down that was so smooth it almost looked iridescent. The label said Italian cotton. Will slipped it on, and the fabric practically glided over his skin. "I have a feeling my own wardrobe is going to appall you," he told Hannibal wryly.

Hannibal smiled, but Will noted he didn't deny it.

* * * *

Hannibal eyed the Motel 6 dubiously, as if he didn't trust its structural integrity. Will caught the look. "It's not that bad," he said. He jogged up the clanging metal staircase while Hannibal followed several steps behind at a more sedate pace. Will walked down the row until he came to his door. The Do Not Disturb sign still hung from the knob. It made him wonder how long it would have taken management to notice if he never came back – if he'd died in that alley.

Shaking off the morbid thought, Will patted his pockets for his key card. He checked the front and back pockets of his pants and even tried the breast pocket that wasn't there before he remembered that he wasn't wearing his own shirt. By this time, Hannibal had caught up with him, and he watched Will dig out his wallet and flip through it. "Problem?" he asked.

"Can't find the key," Will answered. "You didn't see it, did you? It's white and blue, got a big red six on it. I'm sure I had it on me when I left…"

"Not that I recall, but I didn't go through your things," Hannibal said. "Could you have dropped it?"

Will stopped rummaging. "Shit, I hope not," he said, but he'd run out of places to look. There was no choice but to go back down to the front desk and explain the situation.

"I'll just grab my things and we can go. You can wait here," Will suggested while the desk clerk went up to unlock the room with the master key, but Hannibal argued.

"You shouldn't be carrying anything."

There wasn't much to carry, and Will started to say, "I don't think a toothbrush will break me..." but his words were cut off by a shrill panicked scream. He and Hannibal exchanged startled looks, and at once bolted up the stairs towards the source of the sound. The desk clerk had backed away from the open door of Will's room and pressed herself hard up against the railing, attempting to put every inch of space she could between herself and what was inside.

The smell of blood was so strong that Will could taste it on the back of his tongue, and he knew what he was going to find before he stepped into the doorway. The empty shell of a woman was stretched out on his bed. Beneath her, the gaudy orange comforter was black with blood. She had been opened from her pelvis to her sternum and hollowed out. Even her eyes and her brain had been removed from the cracked open casing of her skull. 

Will's missing key card rested in her open palm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a "Tokyo Ghoul" AU, but obviously it isn't set in Japan. Because of that, I've chosen to invent my own replacements for the manga's Japanese terms with the reasoning that English speakers would have their own equivalents. Given the medical/scientific community's love of using Latin, I did too (with one exception). So the replacements are as follows:
> 
> Kakuhou - vesica (pl. vesicae) - "bladder"  
> Kagune - bracchium (pl. bracchia) - "forearm, claw, tentacle"
> 
> Ukaku - ascella - "pinion"  
> Koukaku - calyx - "husk, shell, pod"  
> Rinkaku - vitis - "vine"  
> Bikaku - crinis - "lock, plume, tail of a comet"
> 
> Kakuja - wendigo
> 
> I have also replaced "CCG" with the more natural English word order acronym "CGC".


	4. Chapter 4

"The victim was a cleaner. She didn't check in for her last shift, but it's happened before, so the manager didn't think anything of it. Hotel policy is not to enter a DND room until the sign's been up for at least forty-eight hours with no response from the guest, so no one checked the room. She could have been killed any time in the last three days." Katz flipped back the white sheet to reveal the woman's splayed open body. "Cause of death is obvious."

"Same as the others," Will murmured, but it wasn't. Not exactly. The other kills had been messy, gluttonous. This one was a statement very clearly directed at him.

"It's definitely a ghoul attack. They like to go for the organs. That's where you get the highest concentration of RC cells," Katz explained. "Humans have 'em swimming in their systems too, but only at around one tenth the level of the average ghoul. Their bodies use RC cells they way ours use protein."

"And that's why they eat us?"

"Nutritious and delicious," Katz said irreverently.

"How can the public not know this is going on? If there were even a handful of ghouls in an area, they would account for dozens of murders on a weekly basis," Will said, but Katz shook her head.

"Ghouls aren't like us. They don't need to eat every day. What you're looking at here would tide a ghoul over for a good two or three months at least. The real problem are the ones like the Butcher. They don't eat because they're hungry. They're like addicts. The more they take, the more they want."

"Over-hunting the herd," Will commented. "That level of predation's not sustainable."

"They all slip up eventually," Investigator Crawford said, coming in on the tail end of their conversation. "They'll lay low for a while, take a person here and there – trying to fly under our radar – but eventually they lose control. It's only a matter of time."

"This seems pretty controlled," Will said, looking down at the corpse, knowing the message he was meant to read in it.

"He knows we're onto him," Crawford said. "He wants you to think he can get to you. It's just a scare tactic."

It wasn't the message itself that disturbed Will so much as the fact that there was one. The Butcher's previous kills had all been purely self-indulgent. He'd revelled in the act, but once it was over, once he'd taken what he wanted, he'd discarded the remains like garbage. He'd never staged a scene like this before. "If he thinks I can identify him, then scaring me isn't enough. He needs me dead," Will said. "This makes no sense."

"Maybe he thought you'd be in the room," Katz suggested. "The cleaner surprised him and he used her to write his little note."

"He couldn't have," Will countered. "He would have had to take the key card from me when I was unconscious. Why do that if he didn't think I'd survive? And if he did, why not get rid of me then? Why take the risk?"

"We know he's a risk-taker," Crawford said. "All his kills have been concentrated in a relatively small area, and he hasn't tried to hide or disguise any of them. And then there was the attack on you."

"It didn't go the way he wanted," Will said. "He was interrupted. He spoke to someone."

"You think he might have a partner?" Crawford asked.

"That would explain the short interval between kills," Katz said. "Two mouths to feed instead of one."

"I don't know…" Will said with a disquieted frown. This new kill clearly didn't fit the pattern of the previous ones, but he remembered the animal fear in the Butcher's voice when he'd said, ' _You…_ '. "I feel like I'm being played with."

"So maybe we play our own game," Crawford said, causing even Katz to frown in confusion.

"What do you mean?" Will asked, already suspecting that he wasn't going to like the answer.

"If he's made it personal now, he'll come after you again. So maybe we don't need to find him. Maybe we let him find us."

"Are we talking about using him as bait?" Katz asked, sounding like she didn't like the idea any better than Will did.

"I wouldn't suggest it if I didn't think we could cover him," Crawford said, but when that did nothing to smooth the disapproving arch of Katz's brow, he added, "Issue him some Q-bullets. That should hold him until the cavalry arrives."

"Q-bullets?" asked Will, who'd never heard the term.

"Quinque bullets," Katz said, and when she realized that didn't clarify anything for him, she explained, "You remember what we said about bracchia? Every ghoul can produce one by expressing the RC cells stored up in their vesica. Some, like the vitis or crinis type, are malleable like tentacles, but the calyx type is harder than steel, and it can cut like a knife. Ascella type ghouls can even fire off spines of hardened RC cells like darts."

"Okay," Will said, following so far.

"Most weapons just don't work against ghouls. Their bodies are too tough and they heal too quickly. But they are vulnerable to the bracchia of other ghouls. That's where quinques come in. The CGC developed a process to weaponize the harvested vesica of a ghoul, basically creating an artificial bracchium. That's what we call a quinque. All senior investigators carry one."

Will remembered the suitcase he had often seen Katz carrying. Now knowing what it contained, the entire notion struck him as a little perverse. To turn a creature's own flesh against it. He suppressed a prickling shudder of revulsion at the thought.

"Once we figured out how to manipulate the bracchium material itself, we started producing Q-bullets." For illustration, Katz took out her gun and popped out the magazine. She slid out a single round for his inspection. "Jacketed hollow point with a melted down bracchium core," she said. "These will punch right through a ghoul and disrupt its RC cells from regenerating. So if your friend shows up again…" She tapped the magazine meaningfully.

* * * *

"I'm going home tomorrow," Will said to Hannibal at the table that night. Dinner was, by Hannibal's standards, nothing elaborate – seared beef liver with bacon, fig, and onion compote – but, as usual, delicious. Will was really going to miss the doctor's cooking.

At Will's announcement, Hannibal paused between bites. "Oh?" he said mildly, but Will could see that the news came as a surprise, and Hannibal didn't entirely approve.

"You said yourself that my shoulder is healing well," Will said. In fact, Hannibal had said that it was healing _remarkably_ well. "I don't want to presume on your hospitality any more than I already have."

Hannibal set down his fork and straightened it perfectly parallel to his plate. "What's the real reason?" he asked in a conversational tone that belied the incisiveness of the question.

Will dropped his eyes to his plate, feeling as though he'd been caught in a lie even though the reason he'd given was not untrue. Reluctantly, he detailed Crawford's plan to Hannibal and, unsurprisingly, the doctor was not in favour of it. "You're not returning to the motel," Hannibal said, and Will wasn't sure if it was a question or a statement.

"The motel's not home," Will said. "If he took the card, then he had access to my ID too. He probably already knows where I live. But he doesn't know where you live, and I'd like to keep it that way."

"Isolating yourself may or may not lessen the danger to others, but it certainly endangers you. They have no right to ask this of you," Hannibal said, and Will was a little surprised by his adamance. He wasn't used to people being concerned for him.

"They didn't," Will said. "The plan was for me to stay right here like a staked goat. I refused."

"To be their bait?" 

Will met Hannibal's eyes across the table. "To make that choice for anyone but myself."

Hannibal's expression was so shuttered that it might as well have been a grimace. He radiated unvoiced displeasure, and Will could practically see him formulating and discarding arguments in his mind. "It's not like I'll be defenceless," Will offered.

"No," Hannibal conceded grudgingly, and said with a trace of sarcasm, "They may have left you to the beast, but they've given you a silver bullet."

"Turning their own cells against them," Will mused. "I don't know if it's ironic or just macabre."

"The forms human ingenuity takes can frequently be both," Hannibal said. "In a sense, it's no different than modifying a harmful disease into a vaccine to combat it."

"Do you think that's what ghouls are? A disease? Some kind of genetic mutation?" Will asked. He hadn't considered it. The reason for their existence had seemed unimportant next to the reality of it.

"Monsters or mutants?" Hannibal asked in return. "Ghouls are aggressive mimics. They've learned to move undetected amongst their prey, and even live side by side with them. They may look like us, speak and move as we do, but whatever their origin, they're not human. They are far too perfectly adapted to hunt us. To the hunted, is that not the definition of a monster?"

Will pushed the liver around on his plate with his fork. Ghouls preferred the organs, Katz had said. Hannibal said they were the most nutritious part of the animal. "Is a fox monstrous for killing a rabbit?" Will asked.

Hannibal's lips curved upwards a little, acknowledging the inherent hypocrisy of the argument. "To the rabbit."

Humans hunted. They killed to eat. It was a reality that Will had never questioned. When he gutted a fish, he felt no compassion towards it, no remorse for its death. When a person killed another human being so dispassionately, they labelled him a psychopath. What did a ghoul feel? He had to wonder. All those unsolved murders, the missing persons they never found… Was it just another fish being taken from the pond? Faced with starvation as the alternative, what other choice was there?

* * * *

It seemed like years since Will had been home, though in reality it had only been a little over a week. He swung the door open and his dogs didn't run to meet him. Without the jingle of their tags and the click of their nails on the bare wood, it was too quiet. The house seemed empty without them. Not bothering to kick off his boots, Will sat down on the edge of his bed and picked up the phone to call Irene.

"You were gone so long, I brought them over here," she said. "I didn't think it was good for them to be alone so much. I would have called you, but…"

"I'm sorry," Will said. "Things got…" but he couldn't begin to try to put the past few days into words, so instead he said, "Thanks for looking after them."

Irene knew the kind of work he did, but he never talked about it, and she never asked. Whether her lack of curiosity was natural or deliberate, he appreciated it. She said, "I just put down their dinner. I can bring them over in an hour."

"See you then," Will said. He set the phone back on its cradle and wandered into the kitchen to see about making his own dinner while he waited. He fixed himself a plate of scrambled eggs and tried not to think too much about what Hannibal would have made. He'd been spoiled, he thought to himself, and took a forkful of eggs. Almost as soon as they touched his tongue, he spat them out violently. They tasted unbearably of sulphur and, even when he'd rinsed his mouth at the sink several times, he still felt the powerful urge to gag. When it subsided, he scraped the eggs into the trash. They hadn't smelled off while he was cooking them, but he wasn't going to give them a sniff now. He hadn't thought to check the expiry date on the carton. He'd never had eggs go bad in the fridge before. He checked his milk for good measure, but it didn't smell sour.

The thought of food didn't seem so appealing anymore, so Will washed the dishes and put them away. He was just taking out the trash and its contents of rotten eggs when he heard Irene's tires crunching over the gravel drive. He went out to meet her on the front porch in time to see the furry tide come pouring out of her van, tails all wagging.

"Look who's home!" she said cheerfully, talking to the dogs as much as to him. They stumbled over themselves and each other in their exuberant attempt to get as close to him as possible. They pressed themselves against his legs, and Will crouched down to dole out pets and let them lick his hands in greeting. Only Winston hung back at the edge of the pack, his ears pricked up and his tail lifted but not wagging.

"Hey, boy," Will said, reaching out to him, and was surprised and, for an instant, a little hurt when Winston's ears flattened and he whined softly.

"Aw, what's the matter, Winston?" Irene said, but Will shrugged it off.

"This isn't my sweater," he said, because he realized he was still wearing the blue diamond v-neck Hannibal had lent him. "He might smell Hannibal on me."

"Who's Hannibal?" Irene asked, one brow arching suggestively.

"Whatever you're thinking, don't," Will said, and she laughed and held up her hands innocently.

"None of my business. I'm sure Winston will come around. Won't you, boy?" she said, ruffling the dog's ears. "Once he gets settled in again."

"Yeah, I'm sure."

When Irene had left, Will let the dogs run to work off their excitement. He threw sticks for them until they were too tired to chase them and his good shoulder felt as stiff as his injured one, and when he rounded them all up, Winston trotted into the house with the rest of the pack. "Are we friends again?" Will asked him, offering his hand to sniff. Winston sneezed, but gave his fingers a desultory lick. He went to settle with the others in their customary spots on the floor.

Will went into the bathroom. He skinned out of Hannibal's sweater and looked at his shoulder in the mirror. The stitches stood out blackly against the pale, puckered skin. The wound looked a month old, not a week. There was no redness, no swelling, no sign of infection, but it itched infernally. It woke him in the night sometimes with a feeling like worms crawling under his skin, slithering across his shoulders and down his spine. Hannibal said it was just paresthesia, and would decrease over time as the nerves repaired themselves. When Will had been stabbed the first time, there'd been frightening numbness. After a couple of weeks, it had slowly given way to pins and needles that spread halfway down his arm. It hadn't felt like this – like something foreign and restless moving inside him.

Will pushed that disturbing image out of his mind and pulled on a t-shirt, resolving not to think about it anymore. He poured himself two fingers of whiskey and took it out onto the porch. He leaned against the railing and watched the long grass sway in the evening breeze like waves on the ocean, himself alone, adrift. It seemed impossible for anything to reach him here, but he couldn't allow himself that illusion. He would load his Sig with Katz's Q-bullets, no matter how he felt about them. He knocked back the whiskey. The warmth of it spread down his throat and through his chest, but when it hit his stomach, he felt it cramp painfully. He doubled over the railing and vomited into the bushes, diaphragm contracting with dry heaves after there was nothing left to bring up. Coughing to clear the acidic burn from his throat, he wiped his mouth weakly with the back of his hand. That would teach him to drink on antibiotics, he thought, annoyed at himself for having forgotten. He could only imagine what Hannibal would've had to say about it. He was about ready to give up on the day and crawl into bed.

He was in his own bed for the first time in days, but despite that, he found it difficult to settle. Maybe he had been relying on the sedative effect of Hannibal's painkillers more than he thought. It was a long time before he drifted off, and when he did, he dreamed.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

_Pain woke him. His skin burned. Even the light weight of his t-shirt was unbearable on his back and shoulders. He pulled it off over his head and the muscles in his back stretched and contracted, writhing in protest. He reached back with an exploratory hand and his fingertips encountered a cluster of raised bumps where Hannibal's neat stitches should have been. The skin felt stretched tight, hot to the touch, and throbbed like a second pulse. The strange bumps seemed to swell under the pressure of his fingers as if something was pushing back from the inside, pushing until the skin split and it tore free. Hot, viscous blood ran in slow runnels down his back and something hotter, redder wriggled from the wounds – thin tendrils of flesh that thickened into tentacles as they emerged like snakes from a shed skin, wet and raw with tender new scales._

_He screamed._

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Will woke himself with a hoarse shout. Fear made his skin prickle and crawl, and recalled too vividly the dream that had chased sleep from him. He fumbled for the bedside lamp and switched it on, squeezing his eyes shut against the sudden brightness. On the floor, several of the dogs raised their heads in curiosity. The clock read 3 am. Will sat up in bed. His t-shirt was sweat-soaked. The dampness against his skin reminded him of the blood, and he pulled it off and threw it in a wadded up ball down to the bottom of the bed. He touched his back, felt to the edge of the stitches. There was nothing but smooth skin.

Winston raised himself up from his place by the piano and crossed the room to come and rest his chin on Will's knee. The solid warmth of him was grounding. Will put his hand on the dog's broad, flat head and rubbed his silky ears until the trip hammer pounding of his heart slowed.

He didn't sleep again that night.


	5. Chapter 5

"I could've gone to a clinic for this," Will said over his shoulder. He was standing in Hannibal's kitchen, shirtless, while the doctor removed the stitches from his back. He hadn't told Hannibal about his dream, and Hannibal couldn't see the way his jaw tightened at the uncomfortable sensation of the thread pulling through his skin.

"It's good you came to me," Hannibal said as he worked. "These should have been removed days ago."

"I didn't think it had been that long," Will said, but in truth, he was glad to have them out.

"There's no set time," Hannibal told him. "Different people heal at different rates. You're doing very well."

"I don't feel very well," Will admitted, and felt Hannibal pause in his ministrations. "I've been having headaches, nausea. Everything tastes off to me. I haven't been able to keep down more than a few bites without it coming back up again. You don't think it could be an infection, do you?"

Hannibal laid down the forceps and surgical scissors on a clean towel and gently swabbed the new scar with alcohol. "Let me see your shoulder," he said, and Will turned. The skin was healthy and pink, already trying to heal over the stitches. "Any tenderness?" he asked, prodding with careful fingers, and Will shook his head.

"Just the itching."

Hannibal touched a hand to Will's neck and laid the other on his brow. "You don't have a fever," he said after a moment. "I don't think you need to be concerned about infection. I think it far more likely that stress is the culprit."

"I can handle stress," Will said dismissively, but Hannibal wouldn't let it go.

"Under normal circumstances, I'm sure you could, but your system is already compromised. You aren't eating or sleeping properly. You're living in a state of constant siege. I would be surprised if you weren't feeling the effects."

"That's overstating it a little, isn't it?" Will protested as Hannibal picked up his tools again and started to work on the stitches in his shoulder.

"I don't think so," Hannibal argued. "The CGC are dangling you like a lure. You're suspended in uncertainty, unable to know when or from which direction attack will come. I would call that stressful. Wouldn't you?"

"We don't have a lot of other options," Will said because he couldn't disagree.

"They don't," Hannibal corrected, and Will frowned, knowing where this was going. The doctor said, "You're not CGC. This is not your responsibility."

"It feels like my responsibility," Will said, and hissed when Hannibal pulled a buried suture. Tiny twin droplets of blood prickled up. "I let the Butcher get away once already."

"That's not how I would characterize it," Hannibal said, dabbing away the blood with a square of sterile gauze.

"How would you characterize it?" Will asked, and it came out sounding more belligerent than he meant it to.

Hannibal was unfazed. "You met opposition you were unprepared and unequipped to deal with."

"I'm prepared now," Will said firmly.

Hannibal didn't argue. He looked up, and his gaze met Will's and held it. The reflection of the overhead light turned his ale-brown eyes an unsettling red. He waited until Will looked away to ask, "Do you really believe that?"

Will didn't answer.

That evening, when Will got home, he fed the dogs and let them out for only as long as they needed to do their business. They were antsy, wanting to run, but he kept them inside. He thought about what Hannibal had said, thought about what it would really mean if the Butcher came after him here. He'd never worried about intruders. He had a shotgun under the desk and seven dogs. But the shotgun wouldn't stop a ghoul. The dogs couldn't. They'd die trying. He kept the Sig on him now all the time – even at home – loaded with its magic bullets, and he hoped it would be enough.

He tried to occupy himself by working on an old Johnson outboard motor he'd been meaning to rebuild, but the dogs' restless pacing made it hard to concentrate. Buster kept going to the door and whining, and he'd managed to rile up a few of the others. Will was about to tell him to lie down when, suddenly, he let out a string of sharp staccato barks. Then Max bayed and Harley after him. Then all the dogs were on their feet and so was Will. He peered out the window and into the yard, but it was dark and he couldn't see whatever the dogs could. He tried to listen, but it was impossible to hear anything over the noise of them. Herding them back away from the door, Will told them sharply to stay. He eased his gun from the holster and, with the other hand, flicked on the porch light.

The sudden illumination startled Hannibal coming up his front steps. He froze in mid-step when he saw the gun in Will's hand. "What are you doing here?" Will asked, residual tension making the question into a demand.

"I should have called," Hannibal said contritely, still eyeing the gun.

"No, it's – sorry." Will pulled the decocker and set the gun down on the table to open the door for Hannibal. "Come in."

Hannibal stepped inside, and the dogs thumped their tails and wriggled with the suppressed desire to investigate – even more so when he produced a thermal bag from which emanated some very interesting smells.

"Moroccan lamb stew with apricots and red palm oil," Hannibal announced.

"You… brought me dinner?" Will asked, feeling extra guilty now for having pulled a gun on him. He followed Hannibal into the kitchen and watched him unpack several covered ceramic dishes. He smelled cilantro and cinnamon, ginger and, underneath the warm spices, something fruity and faintly flowery.

"You told me you haven't been eating," Hannibal said with a smile. "I thought I might offer you some encouragement."

"You really didn't have to come all this way," Will said, but he passed Hannibal two plates and dug a couple of forks out of the drawer while Hannibal served out portions of the fragrant stew over beds of fluffy couscous.

They sat down together at the table and Hannibal poured coffee from a thermos. "It smells delicious…" Will said, but he hesitated with his fork in his hand. The thought of puking in front of Hannibal and spoiling the food the doctor had gone out of his way to bring him was mortifying. Hannibal saw the hesitation and, rather than comment on it, he casually suggested that Will try the coffee first.

Will had been subsisting on coffee. For whatever reason, it was about the only thing he seemed to be able to keep in his stomach lately, so he took a sip with reasonable confidence. It was a thick, dark espresso, sweetened with – "Is that… what is that?" Will asked, rolling the coffee around in his mouth and trying to place the mild herbal flavour.

"An infusion of rosemary," Hannibal said. "The syrup lightens the coffee's bitter oiliness without drowning it with excessive sweetness."

"It's good," Will said after another sip. Heartened by his success with the coffee, he tried a bite of stew. The meat was so perfectly tender he hardly needed to chew. The savoury juice washed over his tongue, and suddenly, he was ravenous. He ate several more bites before, smiling in approval, Hannibal took his first. "This tastes amazing," he said without exaggeration.

"It's made with heart," Hannibal said.

Will snorted in amusement. "What, you're telling me the secret ingredient is love?"

"No, I mean there's lamb heart in it," Hannibal clarified, and Will laughed a little awkwardly at the misunderstanding.

"Ah, okay."

Hannibal took a sip of coffee. "Though, of course, I prepare all my meals with care."

"Yeah, I can tell," Will said. He didn't know what else to call it that Hannibal had cooked a meal and then driven over an hour just to share it with him. Surely, he had better things to do.

"It's good to see you eat," Hannibal observed, and Will realized that he had nearly finished his plate. His stomach felt comfortably full and sated for the first time in days. It was a good feeling.

"How goes the hunt for the Baltimore Butcher?" Hannibal asked after some moments. He spoke the epithet with mild distaste, as though he found it slightly vulgar. Or maybe that only spoke to his opinion on Will's continued involvement.

"Nothing yet," Will answered. "Crawford's getting impatient."

"His lure is not as attractive as he hoped," Hannibal said, and Will wondered if the doctor was angling towards another attempt at talking him into quitting.

He said, "His choice now is to keep waiting, or to make it dance and see what happens."

"To make you dance," Hannibal said pointedly. "And if there's a bite, what then?"

"Then we bite back."

* * * *

Will got a call from Katz just as his morning class was letting out. "Am I interrupting anything?" she asked, and when Will said no, she said, "Good, because it doesn't matter. Another body's turned up. Dr. Lecter called it in this morning."

Will heard the words and processed them slowly. He could hear his own heartbeat in his ears. "I'm on my way," he said.

Crawford and Katz were both in the lab when Will joined them there an hour later. So was Hannibal. He looked unharmed, but he was clearly shaken, his expression pinched and his posture pulled in on himself. Nevertheless, he smiled a little wanly when he saw Will.

"What happened?" Will asked immediately, and Hannibal nodded towards a dissection tray on which rested a bloody fist-sized cobblestone and the heart that had been wrapped up with it in stained and crumpled butcher's paper.

"That came through my living room window at 4:30 this morning."

The sight sent a chill down Will's spine. All he could think of was Hannibal's lamb heart stew. "Do we know whose it is?" he asked numbly.

"Search turned up the body in a park two blocks away," Katz said. "The heart was missing, obviously. Other organs, too. He was opened right up." She made a descriptive gesture with one hand. "But here's the interesting part. When I swabbed the lacerations for RC traces, I found them. Just not from the killer. Our victim is a ghoul."

"Would the killer have known that?" Hannibal asked.

"Definitely," Katz said. "Ghouls have a sophisticated sense of smell, way more sensitive than a human's. They can tell us, and even each other, apart by scent alone. There's no way he wouldn't have known."

Hannibal frowned at that. "Is that usual, for ghouls to target each other?"

"Yes and no," Katz answered. "Ghouls are highly territorial, and they don't like competition. When a new ghoul moves into an area, there's almost always a struggle for dominance. Some ghouls will just drive the weaker ones out. Others…" She nodded towards the heart. "But for ghouls to actually prey on each other? That's rare."

"The Butcher is an ambush predator," Will said. "He's not interested in prey that fights back."

"Until you," Hannibal said, and Will nodded.

"But he didn't expect a fight from me. Now, it's like he's trying to provoke me. Why else target you?"

Hannibal blinked in surprise at the question, as though it had not occurred to him that Will might be affected in any way at all by a threat to his well-being. "Intimidation?" he suggested. "This attack on my home seems to suggest that he has been watching us – watching you – for some time now. Perhaps he means to tell you that he's closer than you think."

"He doesn't expect me to be intimidated," Will said with certainty. "He tried that once already and it didn't scare me off. That isn't what this is." His eyes shifted from the heart to Crawford. "I think he laid down his own bait and waited to see if I'd come running."

Crawford's expression was grim. "So the question is, was the Butcher just clearing the stage, or are we dealing with a wendigo?"

"Dealing with a what?" Will was unfamiliar with the word, but the weight Crawford gave it made it seem serious.

Crawford and Katz exchanged a glance. "It's what they call ghouls who cannibalize other ghouls," Katz explained. "Their RC levels are through the roof, and their bracchia have unpredictable qualities. Tough to fight."

"A wendigo is a damn nasty piece of work," Crawford said. "They're the monsters the other monsters are afraid of. You want to pray you never run into one."

"Have you?" Will asked, already sure of the answer, but wanting to hear it.

"Once," Crawford said. "The ghouls around here call him Gentleman Death because he wears a death's head mask. From what we can tell, he claims an area from East Monument street all the way down to the waterfront."

"That's huge," Will said, envisaging the sheer number of people who would live and work in an area that size – Hannibal among them.

"He can hold it. Or at least they believe he can, which is all that matters. Word is, he kills any ghoul who hunts in his territory. Everyone's got stories. Everyone knows someone who knows someone who's seen him, but nobody knows who he really is."

"Are you so sure it's just one guy?" Will asked doubtfully. That was the power of a name. It could outgrow its owner.

"I didn't use to think so," Crawford said. "I thought he was just a Bogeyman, or maybe a front to keep out the competition." He smiled humourlessly. "A ghoul's version of the Chesapeake Ripper. It made a good story."

Will had to admit that it did. "What changed your mind?"

"He did," Crawford answered. "We suspected a ring of ghouls were trading body parts out of John Hopkins. We managed to identify the culprits, and three of us were sent in to clear them out – Krendler, Lass, and myself. But Gentleman Death beat us to it. He took on four other ghouls and left them in ribbons. And I mean ribbons. Nothing you'd even recognize." He spoke the words matter-of-factly, but Will knew how a picture like that burned itself into the mind. Time could only dull the edges so much. It never entirely left you.

"He took down Krendler before we even knew he was still there. The son of a bitch was fast. I've never seen a ghoul move that fast. Lass emptied a full clip of Q-bullets, but she couldn't get a bead on him. You don't use bullets against an ascella type. You need to get in close where they can't use their wings. That's what they teach you in training. Get in close and shut them down. Only that's not how it went. We tried to rush him. Looking back on it now, it was obvious that he let us, but we didn't stop to think."

Crawford paused then to loosen the knot of his tie. He unbuttoned the stiff collar of his shirt and pulled it back to reveal an ugly scar on the side of his neck. "I came at him head on. The plan was for Lass to take him from behind. He took a shot at me like I thought he would, and I was ready to block it, but my quinque cracked and I took one of his pinions in the neck. If I hadn't managed to deflect it, he might have taken my head clean off. I thought I got lucky, but I was just a distraction. He knew where the real attack was coming from. He cut Lass in half. I don't think she even felt him do it. It was that quick. He stood there and he watched her die – just stood there with his hands folded, like he was waiting out that last breath – and then he turned to me. God, he looked like Death standing over me with blood-coloured wings. He picked up my broken quinque, and he told me… 'You can only force something to act against its nature for so long.' I was sure he was going to kill me."

"Why didn't he?" Will asked, feeling a strange and conflicted admiration for the creature that Crawford described, who was not at all like the gloating sadist he remembered the Butcher to be.

"I don't know," Crawford said. "But I promised myself I would make him regret it."

"If Gentleman Death considers this to be his territory, and he guards it as jealously as you say, then the Butcher may just have bitten off more than he can chew," Hannibal remarked pensively.

"The same thought had occurred to me," Crawford responded with a tight smile of anticipation. "We may just have been handed an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone here."

 

"You didn't have much to say about Investigator Crawford's plan," Hannibal commented later as Will walked him back to his car.

"It's not much of a plan," Will said, and Hannibal gave a breath of a chuckle at the bald honesty of his reply.

"You're more cautious than he is."

Will considered that. "I'm not averse to throwing stones. I just like to know what I'm aiming at."

"Gentleman Death, you mean?"

Will nodded. "The way Crawford tells it, he might be as much responsible for keeping the other ghouls in check as the CGC."

"And you're concerned what might happen if that check is removed," Hannibal completed the thought and said, with a self-deprecating little smile, "I must admit my own concern is self-interested."

Will felt a painful twist of guilt at Hannibal's admission. The doctor had been nothing but generous with himself and his time, and his only repayment was that his home had been violated and his life put at risk, all because he had opened his door to Will. "I'm sorry about your window," Will said unhappily. "And all the rest of it. I didn't want to involve you in this."

Hannibal only shook his head at Will's apology. There was no trace of regret in his open smile. "I've been involved from the beginning," he said. "I had as much choice as you."

That was little enough, Will thought, but Hannibal's words warmed him all the same.

* * * *

Will stood on the front porch and whistled for his dogs. They came obediently but slowly, meandering towards the house and stopping frequently to sniff at the tracks of squirrels and other trespassers who'd been made brave by their absence. Will would have liked to give them the time they wanted to explore, to run, and to reclaim their territory. They hated being cooped up inside all the time as much as he hated keeping them there, but there was no way for him to make them understand why it was necessary, and so he only whistled to them again and herded them back inside. At the door, Will held up a hand – a gesture not quite as committed as a wave – and far down the gravel drive, the two CGC investigators flashed their cab light on and off to signal that they were there. He went inside and switched off the porch light, leaving them out there in the dark.

Two more investigators had been posted at Hannibal's house, much to Will's chagrin. Hannibal had been gracious about it, but Will felt as if, from the moment they'd met, he'd done nothing but impose on the man. Now, because of that association, Hannibal was forced to give up his privacy in exchange for security. The doctor insisted that he didn't blame Will, but it was hard not to feel responsible. And they'd already had that argument. Will knew Hannibal's opinion on the matter of responsibility and where it rested. Will hadn't told him that he still wasn't eating.

Stress, Hannibal had said. Stressed was how Will felt, like he was shot through with fine cracks and just barely being held together by the very same pressure that had created them. Like the slightest shift could crack him wide open and let something uncontrollable spill out. He imagined it sat there perched behind his eyes, feasting when he didn't look away from the blood and the bodies, growing hungrier at every taste. At night, it clamoured against the cage of his skull, and he dreamed.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

_There was a plate set in front of him, bone-white and rimmed with gold, and on it, wreathed with a coronet of feathery rosemary fronds, was a heart. It glistened tantalizingly with its own juices, so fresh that it still steamed. He lifted his fork and knife and set them to the tender flesh. Blood welled up from the cut, thick and richly red, and he raised the dripping morsel to his mouth. He ate, piece by piece, until his lips were stained scarlet and the salt-copper sweetness made him swoon._

_"Delicious," he sighed, sated._

_Across the table, Hannibal smiled serenely, his hollow chest a bloody ruin._

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Will woke in the dark with the taste of blood heavy on his tongue. His head throbbed in waves of agony, the pressure unbearable, as if the dream was a malignance the fragile shell of his skull couldn't contain. Lurching from his bed, he stumbled to the bathroom. He made it as far as the sink before his empty stomach heaved and he vomited thin bile into the basin. Afterwards, he stood for several minutes hunched over the sink and trembling, clutching it for balance until the pain in his head dulled enough that he didn't think he would be sick again.

He flipped on the bathroom light, closing his eyes against the harsh brightness, and opened the faucet on full. He rinsed out the basin of the sink and splashed his flushed face with cold water to shock himself into alertness. Or maybe some subconscious part of him naively hoped to wash away the nauseating remnant of the dream. He opened the medicine cabinet to reach for the bottle of aspirin there, and as he did, he caught sight of himself in the mirror. His face was gaunt and waxy pale, and his eyes… The left eye staring out at him from his own reflection was starkly alien, haemorrhaged horrifically black and red. Angry red lines radiated from it like spreading corruption. Will swiped one wet hand across the glass, not trusting the image it held. Water distorted it, but could not wipe it away, and Will pushed the heels of his hands hard against his eyes until colours flared dimly in the blind blackness.

He ran his hands slowly through his dishevelled hair and let them come to rest, cool, at the nape of his neck. When he dared to open his eyes again, they were both red-rimmed bloodshot blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [RomancebyFaye](http://archiveofourown.org/users/RomancebyFaye/pseuds/RomancebyFaye) made beautiful art to go along with this story. Check it out [here](http://romancebyfaye.tumblr.com/post/150842670095/art-for-nbchannibalbigbang-tokyo-ghoulhannibal).


	6. Chapter 6

Will called Hannibal first thing in the morning. The phone rang three times, four, and Will glanced at the clock. 8:30. He couldn't still be sleeping, could he? After the seventh ring, the voicemail kicked in. "Call me when you get this, okay?" Will said, trying to keep the concern out of his voice, but the second he hung up, he called the Baltimore field office and asked to speak to Investigator Katz.

Will waited with nervous impatience until, a few moments later her voice answered, "Katz."

"Did the agents assigned to Dr. Lecter check in this morning?" Will asked without preamble.

"Will? What is this about?" Katz asked in confusion, and then more sharply, "Did something happen?"

Will wanted to know the same thing, and so he asked again, "Did they check in or not?"

"No," she said, and Will felt his throat tighten and his stomach twist with foreboding that didn't relent when she kept talking. "Dr. Lecter said he was going to be working the night shift in Emergency, so there was no point in anyone wasting their time watching the house."

"I can't get in touch with him," Will said, pulling on a jacket and shoving his keys in his pocket.

"He probably just turned off his phone," Katz tried to reassure him, but he was already heading for the door.

"I'm going over there. He can call me an idiot if he – " He stopped in mid-sentence, mid-stride, to stare at the display in front of him. And it was a display, without question, intended for him. It took him a moment to understand what he was seeing. There was a man, or what had been a man, hanging from the lowest bough of the big ash tree in his yard – not from the neck, but like a buck strung up to be field dressed. He had been hung upside down from his ankles, his pelvis split and his ribs forced out so that he could be splayed wide open from crotch to throat. The body had been laboriously skinned – all but the face, which Will remembered red-eyed and grinning.

It was Trevor.

Will walked in a slow circle around the body. The flesh had purpled with exposure to the air. There was no blood. He had clearly been dead for days, if not longer, but there was no stink, either. He'd been kept somewhere cool, completely gutted and hung that way. To season the meat, Will realized.

"Will, are you still there?" Katz asked, a note of concern in her voice.

"I'm here," Will answered. "I think you'd better get over here, too."

* * * *

"You're sure this is the same man?" Crawford asked for the second time, and for the second time, Will nodded.

"He called himself Trevor, but I'm guessing that was an assumed name," he said. They hadn't been able to find any record of him with either the DMV or the Department of Revenue when they'd run a check, and unsurprisingly, he'd been long gone from the 7-eleven by the time anyone knew to look.

"The Baltimore Butcher. He's not what I expected," Crawford said, looking at the sad, skinny corpse, made more attenuated by the flesh it had lost – choice bits carved from the back and thighs like steaks from a butchered carcass. That was what he had been reduced to.

"He said the same thing," Will recalled. It was what had made him so hard to see. He didn't look capable of doing the things he'd done. In death, he didn't look anything but pitiably human.

"We'll know more when we get him to the lab," Katz said.

She sought Will out while the body was being taken down for transport. He'd gone back into the house, and she hovered at the front door until he opened it to her. "You look like shit," she said with a casual sympathy that made it an observation rather than a criticism.

"Long night," Will said, rubbing at the tension behind his eyes.

"Gonna be a long day, too," Katz remarked. "Not a great way to start."

"There are worse ways," Will said with a shrug. "But you didn't come here just to tell me that, did you?"

"Well, someone needs to tell you, and Dr. Lecter isn't around," Katz said with a crooked smile. "But no, that's not why. I wanted to tell you that I sent someone by his place to check on him. He's fine. Says he's sorry for worrying you. He turned off his phone so he could get some sleep." She very thoughtfully didn't say 'I told you so'.

"Does he know about the Butcher?" Will asked, and Katz shook her head.

"Not yet. Didn't seem like the best time to tell him that someone slipped a body past two investigators when I was checking to make sure the same thing hadn't happened to him."

"I'd like to know how they managed that," Will said.

Katz hummed in agreement. "So would Crawford, believe me."

Will could well imagine. "He thinks it was Gentleman Death."

"Don't you?" Katz asked, not like she disagreed, but like she really wanted his opinion.

"I don't know what to think," Will said. Nothing about this felt right. It hadn't for some time now, and the more he tried to pin down why, the more off everything felt. Maybe he was trying too hard to ascribe human motives to something that didn't have them.

"Well, I'd better get back to work. These guys don't dissect themselves," Katz said with a jerk of her thumb in the direction the body had been taken.

"Thanks, Katz," Will said, grateful that she'd taken the time to come and reassure him even if he felt a little silly now for having been so worried in the first place.

She surprised Will with a friendly mocking little laugh. "You know you can call me Beverly, right?"

Will's answering smile was apologetic. "I'm not the most… social person," he said, to which she snorted in amusement. "But I think I can manage first names."

"That’s the spirit," Katz – Beverly – said. "Live adventurously."

"I think I've had enough adventure for one morning," Will said wryly.

"Not over yet," Beverly said and, unfortunately, Will knew she was right.

 

"I didn't mean to call in the cavalry to roust you out of bed," Will told Hannibal sheepishly when he called later that afternoon.

"It's entirely understandable," Hannibal answered. "Under the circumstances, I might have done the same. If Investigator Katz had informed me of the situation this morning, I would certainly have been concerned."

"I think that's why she didn't," Will said. "There wasn't anything you could've done. If he'd wanted me dead, I would be."

"This Gentleman Death?" Hannibal asked, and Will sighed.

"So it seems. Crawford's pretty convinced."

"Crawford's vendetta makes it difficult for him to be objective where this ghoul is concerned," Hannibal said.

Will didn't argue the point, but he said, "That doesn't mean he's wrong."

"No," Hannibal agreed. "If Gentleman Death perceived the Butcher's intrusion as a challenge, then he certainly had reason enough to kill him."

"To kill him, yes. That, I would understand. But why deliver him to me like a gift basket?" That was what bothered Will the most. This death felt like an offering where the others had been goads – a stick and a carrot he didn't understand the purpose of.

"Perhaps he thought you had the bigger grievance," Hannibal said.

" _Me?_ " Will repeated, taken aback by the suggestion.

"The Butcher targeted you," Hannibal explained. "He taunted and toyed with you, took from you your security, your peace of mind – your world as you knew it. Perhaps Gentleman Death considered this restitution."

"Could that matter to him?" Will asked. What measure of right and wrong could a creature like that have?

"Who can say?" Hannibal answered. "I can only imagine what I might feel in his place, and I don't have your gift."

* * * *

"You didn't sleep at all, did you," Beverly said when Will saw her at the lab the next morning. He hadn't, and he knew what he looked like – face grey, eyes bruised with fatigue. He ached everywhere, and he'd been eating aspirin like candy since last night to about as much effect. "Will…"

"I'm fine," he said.

She gave him a narrow-eyed look. "Like hell you are."

"I'm functional," he amended, and very firmly changed the subject. "What do we know about the Butcher?"

"Not enough," Beverly answered with a dissatisfied downward twist of her mouth. "Frankly, I've got more questions than answers."

"Why am I not surprised," Will muttered, but his frustration wasn't directed at her.

"To start with, he's been butchered. And I mean literally. That's not something you normally see in a ghoul attack," she said. "Bites, tearing wounds, evisceration, yeah, but nothing this… methodical. I don't think this was done with a bracchium. I didn't find any trace of foreign RC cells on the body, but I did find RC suppressants in his system."

At Will's blank look, she elaborated. "It's pretty much what it sounds like – a drug that suppresses the activity of a ghoul's vesica and inhibits RC cells from circulating in the body. It stops them from manifesting their bracchia and reduces their ability to regenerate. Investigators use it to control prisoners during transport or interrogation."

"So how did a ghoul get a hold of it?" Will asked.

"Like I said, more questions than answers."

"Dead ghouls don't regenerate," Will said. "If the Butcher had these suppressants in his system, then it means Gentleman Death kept him alive at least for a little while. He could have kept him for days, taking a piece at a time."

Beverly frowned at that. "Why would he do that?"

"Restitution," Will murmured, thinking of what Hannibal had said. "Gentleman Death thought the Butcher owed him more than death… or owed somebody." 

"Crawford's not going to want to let it go at that," Beverly said, sounding as though she wished he would.

"I know," Will said. He was willing to bet that Gentleman Death knew it too. It was starting to feel like this might never be over. Once the monsters marked him, he couldn't turn back. He couldn't un-know them, or they him. He rubbed a weary hand over his face and let his eyes drift closed just for a moment. He could feel the pressure building behind them again, ready to flare into a splitting headache if he didn't stave it off.

"Will, are you all right?"

He opened his eyes to find Beverly looking at him in concern. "Just a headache," he said, and was rewarded with a sceptically arched brow.

"Are we still pretending that you're fine?"

"Functional," he reminded her. He fished in his pocket for the bottle of aspirin he'd taken to carrying around and shook a couple of pills into his hand. He would have swallowed them dry, but Beverly stopped him.

"You know, you can give yourself chemical burns doing that," she said. She opened one of the body refrigeration units and took out a little bottle of orange juice, which she tossed to him. "Here."

Will caught the bottle reflexively, but eyed it with deep suspicion.

"What?" Beverly asked innocently. "It's sealed."

"You keep juice in there?" Will asked, at which she only shrugged.

"A fridge is a fridge."

She wasn't wrong, so Will cracked the seal and swallowed a mouthful of juice along with the pills. It was so sourly acidic that he felt like he'd just taken a swig of cider vinegar. He gave a full body shudder which turned into a retch. He tried to clap a hand over his mouth, clench his teeth shut, but he gagged again, and the orange juice won. It and the aspirin burned its way back up his throat and he coughed it onto the sterile tile floor of the lab.

"Jesus, Will!" Beverly said, pulling several tissues from a box and handing them to him so he could wipe his mouth. He took them with a shaking hand.

"Sorry – " he started to say, but Beverly cut him off.

"Never mind that. You don't think there's been worse on this floor?" She threw down a towel to cover the mess and moved it around carelessly with her foot. She was more concerned with him. "Was that the headache? How long has this been going on?"

"No," Will answered. "I don’t know. A couple of weeks. It comes and goes."

" _Weeks?_ " Beverly's brows rose. "You didn't think you should maybe see a doctor?"

"Hannibal said it was probably just stress," Will shrugged, embarrassed and uncomfortable with her concern.

"Did he actually examine you, or did you just casually mention to him that you weren't feeling so hot?" Beverly asked, and when Will hesitated to answer, she said, "Yeah, that's what I thought." She pointed to one of the lab stools. "Sit."

He did. He felt like one of his dogs. "What are you doing?" he asked when she went to rummage in a cabinet.

"Science," Beverly said and deposited several empty vials and a needle on the table in front of him. "Sleeve up."

Will looked from the needle to her. "Really?"

"Humour me," she said, and Will sighed and rolled up his sleeve so she could tie the tourniquet. It took her a few tries to find the vein. The needle didn't seem to want to go in. "I don't do this very often on living people," she said apologetically.

"Not reassuring," Will said, but he barely felt it when she finally did manage to slip the needle in.

"I'll let you know what I find," she promised when she had taken as many samples as she needed. "It should only take a few hours. In the meantime, go home and, for God's sake, try to relax."

 

Relaxing should have been easier to do with the knowledge that the Butcher was no longer stalking him, but it wasn't. He was through playing the lure, but he had inadvertently attracted a much bigger, cannier fish than he'd ever intended. His instinct, like so many prey animals, was to keep perfectly still and hope that it lost interest, but the more he turned the question over in his mind, the more he feared that this predator had been circling him for longer than he knew.

Will was sure that the Butcher had met Gentleman Death on the night of his attack. The memory had been nagging at the back of his mind ever since he'd heard Crawford describe his encounter with the wendigo. Red wings that rained down death. He remembered seeing the Butcher's body pierced by jagged red spikes that had hailed down so swiftly, they seemed to appear from nowhere. He hadn't understood what he was seeing then, but when he tried the shape of this new information against the gaps in his mind, it filled in the holes and showed him a picture that finally made sense. He knew the dread in the Butcher's heart when he recognized a monster more terrible than himself.

Gentleman Death might simply have killed him then. Some whim that Will couldn't fathom had stayed his hand. It wasn't mercy. Not from a creature who could cut a man apart a piece at a time and let him linger over days. Was he only toying with his food like a particularly cruel cat, or did he have some other purpose? For weeks, the wendigo had played the part of the Butcher, but not perfectly, not closely enough for Will not to have noticed the change. Will didn't believe that was an accident. Gentleman Death had dropped bodies for him like breadcrumbs, knowing he would follow, knowing that they would come to this point, but what Will still didn't understand was why. Only one person could tell him that. Only the monster himself.

Will continued to pick at the problem, his mind running circles around itself, but eventually his exhausted body gave out and he nodded off in his chair. He dozed off and on through the afternoon. At some point, Buster took advantage of his uncustomary immobility to jump up on his lap, and he nosed and licked Will's hand when dreams of red wings made him moan and twitch. It was the phone that finally startled him completely awake in the early evening. It startled Buster too, and he jumped down to the floor, letting Will up to answer it.

"Hello?" he said muzzily, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

It was Beverly. "How are you feeling?" she asked, and Will had to think about it for a moment.

"More or less human," he decided.

"Well, that's a good start. More or less," Beverly said. "Listen, I need to ask you something. Have you ever been tested for ROS?"

"I don't know. What is it?" Will asked cautiously, wondering if he should be worried.

"RC Cell Over-secretion Syndrome," Beverly answered. "It's really rare. Dr. Lecter probably wouldn't have known to look for it."

"Okay," Will said. "So what should he have been looking for?"

"Humans and ghouls both produce RC cells," Beverly explained.. "The normal RC factor for a healthy human is between two and five hundred. We don't really know why it happens, but about one out of every three million people has an abnormality in the cells that causes them to develop out of control. When I checked your levels, your RC factor was well over a thousand. That's within the range of normal for a ghoul."

"What does that mean?" Will asked, wishing that she would just give him the damage, and at the same time, afraid to know.

"The first warning signs are usually localized itching and pain accompanied by digestive difficulties," Beverly said. "At your levels, I'm not surprised you haven't been able to eat. Actually, I'm surprised you aren't experiencing more advanced symptoms."

"Like what?" Will asked, and she hesitated to answer until he pressed her. "Beverly."

Finally, she sighed and told him. "As the condition progresses, it can have cognitive effects – confusion, memory loss, hallucinations. Eventually, if RC levels aren't controlled, the patient will start to develop painful bracchium-like growths on their body and sometimes even their organs."

"That's a hell of a lottery to win," Will said numbly.

"This isn't a death sentence, Will," Beverly assured him firmly. "The condition can be managed successfully with RC suppressants. I'll give you some myself until you can get a prescription. It _will_ help. No more headaches. In a few days, you should even be able to eat normally again."

Will exhaled a slow breath and forced himself to take another. "Yeah…"

"I mean it, Will. You're going to be okay." Beverly's tone was adamant, as though she refused to accept any other possibility. It was oddly comforting.

"It seems like I'm always thanking you," he told said.

"You can buy me lunch once the suppressants do their thing," Beverly joked, and Will actually found himself smiling.

"I definitely will."


	7. Chapter 7

Beverly had the RC suppressants for him the next morning. She held up the bottle and rattled it. "I got your drugs."

"Should we be doing this in an alley?" Will asked, and she laughed and tossed him the bottle.

"This is the stuff we use to interrogate ghouls. The dosage is a little higher than what would normally be used to treat ROS, but given your RC factor, that's probably not a bad thing. At least to start with," she said. "One pill in the morning and one at night. They should take effect right away, but it may take a couple of days for your system to regulate. If you keep having the headaches or you notice any skin changes, let someone know this time. Deal? Talk to Dr. Lecter. He should be able to write you a proper prescription."

"Sounds good," Will said, turning the bottle around in his hands. "Do I take it now, or…?"

"Knock yourself out," Beverly said. "There's a water cooler in the hall."

"No more morgue juice?" Will grinned.

Beverly snorted. "Because that went so well last time." More seriously, she said, "I'd wait a good six to eight hours at least before trying to eat or drink anything other than water. Just to be sure."

"Right."

Will popped open the bottle of suppressants and tipped a pill into his palm. It was tiny – only about the size of the nail on his little finger. It seemed unbelievable that something so small could have such an effect on his body. "Here's hoping," he muttered to himself and washed the little pill down with a paper cone full of cold water. He wondered how long it would take for the drug to take effect. He wondered if he would feel it when it did.

"Welcome back to the human race," Beverly said when he came back into the lab. He knew she was joking, but the sentiment gave him pause. A few hundred random little cells. Was that really all that separated humans from ghouls? Beverly seemed to be able to tell that she had disturbed him, because she started to apologise. "You know I didn't mean – "

Will waved it off with a token smile. "Yeah, I know." But he asked her, "Do you ever think about it? What it's like for them?"

She pursed her lips and didn't answer right away. Will almost told her to forget it, but at length she said, "I try not to. I should, but I've got a job to do, and that won't help me do it. I know that's selfish."

Will nodded in understanding. Her bare honesty surprised him. She didn't make any excuses for herself. It was hard to feel critical of her for that. Will might have felt the same in her position.

When Crawford came in, discussions of ethics got pushed to the side. He wanted to talk about Gentleman Death. He wasn't pleased that Will had kept information from him, even if Will had never intended to do it. The fact that he'd suffered a head injury and had barely trusted his own recollection of that night until third party input made him re-examine it didn't seem to count with Crawford as an excuse.

"You say you saw him that night," Crawford said. "Are you sure it was him?"

"I think so, yeah," Will said, but Crawford pressed him.

"You think or you know?"

Will had found that defensive was never the best tact to take with Crawford, so he responded a little curtly, "If you really doubted it, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Yes, Gentleman Death was there, and I don't think the Butcher walked away from that meeting. We were only meant to believe that he did. The clues were there, and we ignored them in favour of what we wanted to see."

"The cleaning lady? The attack on Dr. Lecter? The other ghoul?" Crawford listed off victims and Will nodded.

"Those scenes weren't staged by the same self-indulgent sadist who ripped apart a kid in an alley. They were calculated and executed for very specific effect," Will said. "And he was so careful. Katz found no foreign RC cells on either body. He knew she would look. He knew she would be able to tell right away that the wounds hadn't been made by a vitis type bracchium and he knew you had his on record, so he didn't use it. If we hadn't already been making the assumption, there would have been no reason to think that the killer was a ghoul at all. Apart from the missing organs, there were none of the tells from the Butcher's other scenes. Those victims could just as easily have been killed by the Chesapeake Ripper. That's why I was originally called in to consult on the Butcher's case. You would never mistake one for the other. We got complacent, and it made us sloppy."

"He's been watching us chase our tails this whole time, and laughing his ass off," Crawford pronounced like he took it as a personal affront. Will suspected that was at least partly the point, but he wasn't ready to accept it as Gentleman Death's only goal. It seemed far too simplistic, far too… crass, from what little he'd come to understand of the wendigo's mindset.

"I don't think he was laughing."

"Well, he won't be when I catch up with him," Crawford promised darkly.

 

Will called Hannibal on his way home.

"Will. How are you?" Hannibal asked warmly. He always asked, but unlike most people for whom the question was just conversational white noise, Hannibal really wanted to know.

"Fine. Good, even," Will answered, and for once, it was mostly true.

"That's good to hear," Hannibal said. "You sound much better than the last time we spoke."

Will knew Hannibal had been concerned about his health, both physical and mental. The doctor thought that the Butcher case was getting to him, and Will would be lying if he said that wasn't part of it. But a part of him was also just a little bit pleased to be able to tell Hannibal Beverly's strange news – to be able to point to a concrete cause that was more than just stress and say, 'I told you so'.

Before he could do that, however, Hannibal said, "It's fortunate that you called. Actually, I was just about to call you. Are you still at the FBI field office, or have you left for the evening?"

"I just hit the Beltway. I can turn around," Will offered. "Why?"

"I was going to invite you for dinner," Hannibal said. "It's been some time since we shared a meal."

The invitation was unexpected and welcome. "I'd like that," Will said. "Give me about half an hour. I'll be there."

"I look forward to seeing you," Hannibal said and ended the call.

It wasn't until after he hung up that Will realized he'd forgotten to tell Hannibal about the suppressants. He'd forgotten about them himself. Beverly had told him not to eat anything for eight hours. "Shit," he cursed softly, wondering if he should call Hannibal back and bow out. What would he say? 'Sorry, but it might be a few days before my stomach relearns how to digest anything other than human flesh'? The thought was a flippant one, but it caught and clung with surprising tenacity. For weeks, everything he'd put in his mouth had tasted awful. Nearly every bite of food he'd tried to eat had come right back up. He knew the reason now, but it brought with it a disturbing realization. Hannibal's cooking had never made him ill. He'd enjoyed it, looked forward to it even, when he'd barely been able to tolerate the smell of anything in his own fridge. And Hannibal had never let him go for too long between the meals he prepared. Never so long that he'd actually starved. 

Hannibal knew what was wrong with him. Hannibal knew, and he'd been feeding him… Will's mind wanted to shy away from the truth, but he forced himself – like he always did – to look and to understand. On the morning before the cleaning woman had been found in Will's motel room with her skull scooped out, Hannibal had made him scrambled eggs with what he'd said were calf's brains. Hannibal had had access to Will's wallet. He'd handed it over when Will asked, and Will hadn't bothered to check the contents. He hadn't checked to see that the key card was still inside. He'd trusted the doctor. He'd trusted him so much that he'd invited Hannibal into his home. They'd shared another meal together there – lamb heart stew – the night before Gentleman Death had thrown another ghoul's heart through Hannibal's window. It had frightened Will then to think that he was being watched so closely. He'd never thought to ask himself who was closest to him. All along, Will had been asking himself why the ghoul had let him go, but Gentleman Death hadn't let him go. He'd taken him home.

Will turned onto Chandler Square and pulled into the side of the road. He could see Hannibal's house a few doors down. He could see the inviting glow of lights in the windows. The smell of herbs and roasted meat would be wafting temptingly from the kitchen. He could turn around now. He could go home and call Beverly and tell her what he knew. She would tell Crawford, and he knew what Crawford would do. Instead, he drove up the last few hundred feet and into Hannibal's driveway.

Hannibal answered the door when Will rang the bell. He smiled just like he always did, eyes narrowed, mouth softened, the corners just barely turning up. Will thought he would look different somehow, as if knowledge would let him see past this charming visage to the monster under Hannibal's skin. It didn't. There was no death's head mask. There was only his friend inviting him inside with a smile.

"Please, come in," Hannibal said.

Will didn't allow himself to hesitate on the doorstep. He stepped inside and Hannibal didn't step back. He had to pass close to the other man. Will wondered if Hannibal could detect the RC suppressants in his system. He didn't know just how acute a ghoul's senses were. "Sorry to make you wait," he said, forcing a casual tone.

"It's no trouble at all," Hannibal replied graciously. "This particular dish benefits from longer cooking."

"What are you making?" Will asked, and his voice didn't tremble at all.

"Ginger-braised ox cheeks with spiced red lentils," Hannibal answered. 

Will could smell the ginger and, underneath it, the savoury aroma of meat stewing in its own juices. He felt his mouth start to water in response, and refused to wonder about the true source of the 'ox cheeks'. He would never get through this dinner otherwise. "Sounds delicious," he said.

Will told himself he wouldn't wonder, but when Hannibal served their plates, it was impossible not to. He looked down at the tender cuts of meat in front of him and wondered who they had been carved from. Was it the Butcher? How much of that ghoul's flesh had Will eaten, all while fearing the same fate for himself?

Hannibal noted his hesitation. "Is your stomach still troubling you?" he asked with apparent sympathy, but Will was wary. His awareness of his own dissemblance made him suspect Hannibal. It made him question how much Hannibal knew and how much he might have guessed. Was Hannibal asking a leading question only to see if Will would volunteer the information? He didn't want to take the chance. Not when Hannibal might deduce the reason for his sudden reticence.

"Not as much anymore," Will chose to answer. "Actually, that's the reason I called you earlier."

"I wondered why you had called. I was distracted by my own agenda and I realized only afterwards that I had forgotten to ask," Hannibal said mildly, and Will felt as if he'd just leapt over a pitfall and landed with both feet safely on the other side.

"Beverly – Investigator Katz, I mean – ran a couple of tests on a hunch," Will plunged ahead. "It turns out my RC factor was way too high and that's what was causing the vomiting. She says the condition is called ROS. I'd never heard of it. Apparently, it's really rare."

"There's still so much the medical community doesn't know about RC cells," Hannibal said. "It's fortunate that Ms. Katz was able to provide you the care that I was not." Hannibal's expression gave nothing away. Not surprise or anger, not suspicion. Will hadn't expected it to.

"The good news is, she says it's totally treatable. She gave me some RC suppressants, but she said I should ask you to write me a proper prescription. If you can, I mean. I know it's not really your area." Will met Hannibal's eyes across the table. He thought they narrowed ever so slightly, but he couldn't be sure. He wondered if it was his imagination that made them look red in the lamplight.

"Certainly. I would be happy to if she can provide me with the appropriate dosage information," Hannibal answered smoothly. Did he sense the trap? He had to know that Beverly would have detected the suppressants in the Butcher's body. He had to know that access to such a restricted drug would drastically narrow the field of possible suspects. He said, "It must be a relief to have a diagnosis."

"It is," Will agreed. He took a bite of the ox cheek, made a show of savouring it. To his shame, he didn't have to pretend. He saw Hannibal's mouth curve in pleasure, and he smiled in return. "In a way, I'm almost thankful to Gentleman Death. I might never have been diagnosed if I hadn't gotten mixed up in all of this."

"Life can take some strange and unexpected turns," Hannibal mused. "Sometimes, they turn out to be for the best."

After dinner and coffee, they said good night. Up to that point, in the back of his mind, Will hadn't been entirely sure that Hannibal would let him go. It wasn't until the front door had closed and he was sitting again behind the wheel of his car that he let out the breath he felt like he'd been holding for the last three hours. Cold sweat prickled down his spine and his hands shook until he gripped the wheel, white-knuckled, to make them stop. He took a deep, slow breath and forced his grip to relax. He put the car in gear, put his foot on the gas – one little action after another until they seemed natural again, until time lost its adrenaline-induced elasticity and his heartbeat slowed. He wasn't afraid of Hannibal, but his body knew that he should be. Rationality overrode it. Hannibal had ample reason to kill him, and had had more than ample opportunity. If he didn't, it was because the wendigo wanted something from him. What frightened him was the growing suspicion of what that might be.

He called Beverly when he got home. It was late and she was surprised to hear from him. "What's up?" she asked, not quite concerned but getting there. "Not the headaches again?"

"No, nothing like that," Will assured her. "I just have a question for you."

If she thought it was strange that he would be calling her after eleven o'clock at night with a question he could have asked her in person in the morning, she didn't say so. "Shoot," she said.

"The organ that stores RC cells and produces the bracchium – the vesica? Where is it, anatomically speaking?"

"Generally speaking, it nestles alongside the spine, but specifically where depends on the RC type of the ghoul," she answered. "Why?"

Will ignored the question. "Say a vitis type, for example."

"With that one, it's the lumbar region, right around L3, L4," Beverly said. "Small of the back. Why do you ask?" It hadn't escaped her notice that he hadn't answered the first time she asked.

"No reason," Will lied. "I was just thinking. It's not really the sort of thing I can Google."

"Yeah, I guess not," Beverly conceded. "I should write you up a cheat sheet."

"I'm sorry for calling so late," Will apologised. "I probably should have just waited. I wasn't thinking."

"No, it's fine. It's not like I was in bed," Beverly said. The edge of concern was gone from her voice.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Will said.

When he hung up, he went into the bathroom. He stripped off his shirt and looked at himself in the mirror. The new star-shaped scar on his shoulder was fading. He felt with his fingertips at the small of his back and twisted around, trying to see it in reflection. He saw nothing but smooth skin. The scar left by Hannibal's stitches was only a memory, but Will ran his fingers over the spot. It was as sensitive as new skin, prickling under his touch. He felt an odd sensation, like muscles he didn't know he had twitching and flexing of their own accord, and he snatched his hand away. "Oh, Christ," he whispered.

He knew what it was.

Will jerked open the medicine cabinet with such force that bottles rained into the sink. He ignored them and fumbled open the bottle of RC suppressants. He shook four of them into his cupped palm and swallowed them dry, but even as it did it, he knew it would make no difference. The drug couldn't undo what Hannibal had done. It couldn't erase the thing that Hannibal had put inside him.


	8. Chapter 8

"I need to see Investigator Crawford," Will said so flatly that Beverly looked at him in alarm.

"What happened?" she asked immediately, and he saw the way she scanned his body quickly for signs of injury or illness.

"You were wrong. It's not ROS," he said. He lifted up his shirt and turned his back to her so that she could see the skin redden and part, see the slender coils of his bracchium stretch out like curious questing fingers. The still unfamiliar sensation made his skin crawl. It didn't hurt, but he'd screamed all the same the first time it had happened, in the early hours of the morning when the suppressants finally gave out. It felt like a muscle, long atrophied, spasming to life.

"Oh my God," Beverly gasped, and she backed up several paces on pure instinct. "Oh my God, Will, how is that – "

"He put it inside me," Will said. The muscle relaxed, and the malleable mass of cells retreated into his body. He smoothed down the hem of his shirt.

"Put what, Will? Who did? What are you talking about?" Beverly asked, the questions increasing in both pitch and volume as she realized just how completely screwed the situation was.

Will had had his breakdown last night, and coming out the other side had left him in a state of dissociative calm that he wasn't ready to leave behind yet. He answered the question, and didn't ask himself what he would do next. "Gentleman Death. I know who he is."

"Fuck, Will," Beverly said, and that short almost involuntary utterance bore equal parts sympathy and dread.

He said, "You should call Crawford."

She did. It was a short, muffled conversation not quite hushed enough for him not to hear its furious tone. They waited together in tense silence, Beverly's lips compressed in an unhappy line with the effort of holding back the questions she so clearly wanted to ask.

"You might as well have these back," Will said, holding out the bottle of RC suppressants to her.

She wouldn't take them. "I still think they can help you," she said firmly, almost challengingly. Will didn't think so, but he only shrugged and put the bottle back in his pocket.

When Crawford arrived, it was with a disturbed frown already creasing his brow. "Talk to me, Will," he said. "Explain this to me, because it makes no goddamn sense."

"It makes perfect sense," Will said patiently. "The CGC harvests the organs from ghouls, manipulates them, turns them to their own use. Gentleman Death wanted to see if he could do the same."

"That's insane!" Beverly said. "You can't just mix and match, pick organs out of one body and shove them into another."

"You'd need extensive anatomical knowledge, surgical skills, and access to the tools of the trade," Will agreed. "You'd need time to prepare the host for the transplant. You'd need to monitor closely for signs of rejection, and you'd need to make sure that there was no outside medical intervention."

"It's impossible," Crawford said, and Will shook his head just once.

"It's not. One person had the knowledge, the skills, and the opportunity. Dr. Lecter."

" _You_ brought him here," Crawford protested, but Will could see that the idea had already taken hold in his mind. He was matching up facts and the margin for doubt was narrowing to the vanishing point.

"Yeah, I did," Will admitted. "And he probably loved it. He wormed his way right into the beating heart of the CGC, right under your noses, and you didn't even see him. I didn't either. Not until… not until he wanted me to."

"You think he _wants_ to be caught?" Beverly asked incredulously.

"I think he wants to be seen," Will said. "And I think he counted it worth the risk."

"Well, I hope he was right," Crawford said, his voice devoid of even the shadow of sympathy.

"If he knows I know the truth, then he'll suspect that you do too," Will cautioned. "He'll be expecting you."

"Let him," Crawford said with iron determination, and Will could see how much the man wanted this fight. For him, this was the second round, picked up right after the first, as if the intervening years had never happened.

"The last time you thought you had the drop on him, people died," Will said bluntly. "He knows you. He knows how you fight. You'll never get close enough." He took a deep breath, let it out slowly between tight lips. "But I can. He can't anticipate what I'll do. He can hope – and he has been – but he doesn't know."

"Gentleman Death is a wendigo," Crawford warned. "A strong one. Fighting him won't be like fighting the Butcher. Q-bullets won't be enough."

"I have other defences," Will reminded Crawford quietly, and he saw how it disturbed the investigator.

"Listen to me," Crawford said with grave directness. "Whatever he's done to you, whatever you've... Whatever strength it's given you, you can't trust it. You can't rely on it. All ghouls lose control, Will. All of them, sooner or later."

"I understand," Will said. "But I have to try."

"You don't have to do this, Will. It isn't your responsibility," Beverly said.

He wanted to tell her how much she sounded like Hannibal. Instead, he said, "I'm the only one who can."

* * * *

Will left the dogs with Irene. He told her he had to go back to Baltimore to wrap up a few loose ends, and he wasn't sure how long it might take. She was understanding. She always was. He got down on his knees and let the dogs swarm him, getting his arms around as many of them as he could. "You guys be good, okay?" he told them, and if his stroking fingers knotted a little more tightly than usual in their ruffs, they didn't seem to mind. His eyes were dry. He would see them again or he wouldn't. Either way, he knew they would be well taken care of, and that had to be enough.

It took him a little over an hour and a half to drive to Hannibal's. As he turned down the quiet tree-lined street, he looked at the few cars parked by the curbs. They were all empty. Crawford would be waiting somewhere close by, just out of sight of the house in case Hannibal should look out the window and notice an unfamiliar car idling in the street. There would be other investigators with him, most likely. Will hadn't asked. He didn't want to know how many other lives his plan was risking. If it could be called a plan. The truth was, he didn't know what Hannibal would do. He had nothing more in mind than to present Hannibal with the apparent success of his insane endeavour and ask, 'what happens now?'. It seemed at once a simpler and a much more tangled question than 'why?'.

Will climbed the front steps and rang the doorbell. He stood there with his hands shoved into his pockets, hyper-aware of the weight of his Sig in the holster at the small of his back, hidden underneath Hannibal's blue diamond weave sweater. He felt the press of the grip resting cold against his skin.

Hannibal answered the door. He took in the sight of Will standing on his doorstep and something flickered in his eyes, there and gone again. "Will," he said. "I wasn't expecting you."

That was a lie.

"Can I come in?" Will asked, and was moving even before Hannibal answered, "Of course." He went to the kitchen. That was where they'd always had their conversations, and he let his feet take him there now without thinking about it. Hannibal followed sedately. He didn't ask the reason for Will's unannounced visit, seeming content to wait for Will to declare it on his own. As if he didn't already know.

Will took the bottle of RC suppressants from his pocket and set it down with a precise little click on the center of Hannibal's stainless steel prep table. "These won't help, will they," he said, turning to face Hannibal.

Hannibal's shoulders were relaxed, his hands linked casually in front of him in an attitude of polite attention. "They weren't designed to be helpful," he said.

"To ghouls," Will clarified, and Hannibal inclined his head. "But I'm not a ghoul."

Hannibal surprised him by asking, "What are you, then?"

"I'm human," Will said resolutely, but in the moment he hesitated, he wondered who he was trying to convince – Hannibal or himself.

Hannibal's brows rose. "Are you?" he asked mildly. He took a step forward and Will took one back. Hannibal paused, arrested in mid-motion as though he was surprised by the reaction… almost as though he was hurt by it. "Do you know why ghouls like myself are called wendigo, Will?"

Will shook his head mutely.

"It's an Algonquian word," Hannibal said. "An evil spirit of greed and gluttony that possesses a man who tastes human flesh. Once he eats the forbidden flesh, he craves it, and no other food will satisfy him."

"You fed them to me," Will accused. "You wanted to make me like you."

"You are like me," Hannibal replied evenly. He pointed his steepled fingers at Will. "When you sat at my table, you knew what was on your plate… and yet you ate."

"You didn't leave me much choice," Will said, but he couldn't deny the truth that Hannibal presented, and he flushed with anger and self-disgust.

Hannibal was relentless. "There's always a choice. Starvation is always an option, though most people don't have the courage or conviction. I don't," he said without shame. "But that is what the CGC asks of me – of all of us. I didn't let you starve. Perhaps it would have been instructional."

Will remembered being exhausted. He remembered how his body ached and an unshakeable weakness had seemed to drag at his limbs. All his thoughts were filled with blood. That was hunger. If it had continued, he knew he would have broken. "What do you want?" he asked finally, dully, desperately. "You didn't go after the Butcher that night because you wanted to save me."

"No," Hannibal admitted freely. "The Butcher offended me. He killed wantonly and without need. The wolf that goes among sheep must do so unseen. His recklessness drew the eye of investigators and brought them into my territory. His death was beneficial to us both."

"It was his vesica you put inside me," Will said. He didn't know what to feel about that. The thing that had nearly killed him – that would have killed him, if not for Hannibal's intercession – was now a part of him.

"Yes," Hannibal said. "I told him what I planned to do. I needed his help. It was the least he could do after causing me such inconvenience."

"Why me?" Will asked. It was a self-pitying question, and he felt small and ridiculous for asking it, but he needed to know. There had to be a reason.

"I wanted to see what would happen," Hannibal said, but there was an almost avaricious curiosity in the admission that kept it from sounding flippant. "You are also a wolf among sheep, and part of you has always known it. You're able to think like a predator because you were always meant to be one. All I did was strip away the ill-fitting disguise." And as Hannibal spoke, his own disguise was stripped away. His dark eyes turned darker, bleeding into blackness, except for points of red which glowed like embers. His bracchium burst from his shoulders, unfurling and spreading out to either side like crystalline wings. They seemed to glow with their own light in variegated shades of crimson and violet like candlelight through cathedral glass. He didn't look like Death. He looked like the Devil, beautiful and terrible, tempting a fall with a saturnine smile.

_Q-bullets won't be enough_ , Will remembered Crawford saying even as he pulled his gun and fired nine rounds at Hannibal almost point blank. In the same moment, Hannibal swept one wing of his bracchium down and forward like a shield. The toughened crystal-like cells absorbed the impact of the bullets and the spider web cracks they made melted away almost instantly. Then Hannibal swept the other wing forward and Will just had time to dive underneath the prep table before a dozen jagged red spikes embedded themselves in the steel.

"This isn't how I wanted it," Hannibal said, and there was no anger in his voice. He spoke as if Will had disappointed him.

Will felt the hysterical urge to laugh. "It's not what I wanted, either." He'd never wanted any of this.

Hannibal moved, and Will moved in the opposite direction, but he underestimated the reach of those wings. He threw himself flat as one sliced overhead, and he scrambled to regain his feet. He had six rounds left in his Sig and a bracchium he didn't know how to use – one that had already proved no match for Hannibal. Crawford was close by. He would have heard the shots Will fired. But once Crawford got involved, there would be no salvaging the situation. People would die. "You should have killed me," Will said. It made Hannibal smile a little wistfully.

"I know."

But against all probability, Will wasn't dead. He shot at Hannibal and Hannibal returned fire, the razor-sharp shards of his bracchium passing close enough to Will's body to stir the air against his skin, but no closer. Never closer. Even now, Hannibal was not yet seriously trying to kill him. Will fired his last bullets to cover his dash for the open doorway. Hannibal dodged as sinuously as a viper. His legs coiled underneath him and he leapt the length of the room. For one terrifying moment, he was in the air, his red wings spread like an aureole of blood, and then he dropped. He caught Will by the neck and threw him skidding across the floor. Will levered himself up against the wall, but there was nowhere to go except towards Hannibal, and he was closing that last distance fast. The razor tips of Hannibal's wings drove themselves into the wall on either side of Will, enclosing him within their circle. Their emanating glow made the very air red-tinted, bloodstained.

"Why are you so determined to waste the gift I've given you?" Hannibal asked, his tone plaintive and bewildered.

"Why are you so sure that I am?" Will asked in return, almost gently chiding, the moment before the six arms of his bracchium drove themselves up through Hannibal's body.

Hannibal gave a harsh grunt of pain as the air was forced from his lungs. His eyes widened in shock and the fingers of one hand snagged on Will's sleeve and held tightly. His shoulders sagged and his beautiful lucent wings shrivelled and receded like a butterfly retreating into its cocoon. Will caught him when he would have fallen. "Is this what you wanted?" Will asked.

Hannibal's smile was blood-flecked. He took a bubbling breath. "Will you turn me over to those grey-suited vultures… to pick over my corpse? … Make a quinque out of me?"

The front of Will's sweater was wet with Hannibal's blood. His hands were red with it. "That isn't up to me," he said, and Hannibal made a painful breathy sound that might have been a laugh.

"Of course it is. How long do you think… it will be before they do the same to you? How long before… they realize that they can't control you?"

A floorboard creaked in the hallway and Will's head turned sharply. Investigator Crawford's broad, tall silhouette filled the doorway and he held his quinque. It moulded itself to his right arm in an organic sleeve that extended from his shoulder to his fingertips and several inches beyond, ending in a sharp claw-like prong. His hard eyes found Hannibal and took in his injuries. "All ghouls lose control," he told the wendigo. "It's only ever a matter of time."

"Jack Crawford," Hannibal spoke the name with all the familiarity he could not admit to before. There was something that sounded very like amusement in his strained voice. "So, the cavalry has finally arrived."

"Gentleman Death." Crawford advanced with slow, deliberate steps like a hunter approaching a wounded animal in a trap. "It took me six years to hunt you down. It's not going to take me six minutes to finish it."

Crawford was so intent on his prey that he barely seemed to take note of Will's presence until he spoke. "It's already finished, Jack," Will said. "Look at him." Hannibal bled from half a dozen deep wounds in his chest and belly, any one of which might have killed a human. At least one of his lungs was punctured, and Will couldn't begin to guess at the state of his other organs. He would heal, but not fast enough to let him overpower Crawford.

"I am looking," Crawford answered. "You're the one who's not seeing, Will. You think that because you don't see a death's head, he's not wearing a mask? He's played you before. You know exactly how 'helpless' he really is."

"Then give him the suppressants, if you need to be sure," Will said. Beside him, Hannibal made a pained sound that would have been a protest if it had more breath behind it. Hannibal would not trade his freedom for his life, but he had given that choice into Will's hands. It would have been kinder to kill him, but Will was not capable of Hannibal's version of kindness.

"There's only one way to be sure," Crawford said. He drew back his arm encased in the quinque and slashed downward at Hannibal's unprotected back.

Hannibal moved, but not fast enough. Will was faster. His bracchium moved, responding to his will almost without his conscious thought, to intercept Crawford's blow. One slender red-scaled tentacle wrapped itself around Crawford's arm to stop its descent. Crawford twisted and pulled, but he couldn't break Will's tenacious grip, so instead he used it to reel the other man in like a fish on a line. He dealt Will a vicious sucker punch that left him doubled over and gasping, and followed it with a knee to the face.

"Stay down, Will," Crawford said, standing over him while he spat blood on his hands and knees. "Don't do something you'll regret."

"I already have," Will said. He launched himself up and at Crawford, grappling with his arms and his bracchium both. Will's body was learning a ghoul's strength, but Crawford knew its capabilities better than Will did. He knew its weaknesses. His quinque swept up, shearing off the ends of two tentacles as they tried to grab hold, and Will cried out. The pain surprised him. It made it impossible to ignore that this alien flesh was his – not merely a tool of desperation, but a part of his own body, no matter how strange.

"You should've stayed down," Crawford said with a finality that told Will he'd been given his chance. The claw of his quinque drove down between Will's shoulders, and then again and again with quick, merciless jabs. Will's bracchium raked for purchase and he shoved the man away from him with enough force that he felt ribs crack. Crawford's body hit the wall hard enough to crack the plaster, and he slid down, momentarily dazed by the impact. Will staggered, streaming blood onto the floor already wet with Hannibal's. He didn't know how many times he'd been stabbed. He gulped in a breath that felt like barbed wire constricting around his lungs. Crawford was getting to his feet, and Will didn't know if he had the strength to fight him off a second time.

Crawford charged like a bull, head down, quinque outthrust like a lance. Will braced himself to spring, but his foot slid in the slick of blood. He saw the point of Crawford's quinque driving for his heart, and then he saw nothing but red. He felt no pain. He had a brief, disorienting moment to wonder if that was a good or a bad thing, and then the red veil parted. Hannibal unfurled his crystalline wings from their sheltering embrace and swept them out like blades. One razor edge met the downward stroke of Crawford's quinque and cut through, severing the hand that held it. Crawford fell back with a shout and he clutched at the wound with his other hand, holding it protectively against his body. The cut was so quick, so clean that it bled only slowly, blood oozing in thick, sluggish lines between his fingers.

Hannibal stepped from behind Will. He was red with his own blood, red with Will's. With his crimson wings outstretched, he looked like hell's vision of a martyr – as apt to cause suffering as to endure it. He looked down on Crawford with a curious mix of pity and contempt. "Your weapons will always betray you, Jack," he said in a dispassionate tone devoid of mockery.

"You can only force something to act against its nature for so long," Jack said tightly through gritted teeth. His gaze passed over Hannibal and found Will, and Will met it without flinching from the accusation there.

Will said, "You forced this. It could have gone differently."

Crawford's face was ashen, but his eyes were hard and bright. "It still could. It's not too late to do the right thing."

"Right for who?" Will asked. For Crawford, maybe, and maybe he thought that was the same thing. For Will, it wasn't so simple. "You wanted me to feel responsible. You counted on it. You knew I wouldn't walk away. Now… I wonder if you would ever have let me."

"You have the choice now. Cut yourself free from the dove's tether," Hannibal said, the whispering devil at his shoulder.

"I'm not going to kill him," Will answered. His breath came easier. His wounds no longer pained him. His body was remaking itself with an ease and speed that staggered his mind, struggling to do the same. To Crawford, he said, "We're leaving now. Don't try to follow us."

Crawford said, "You know I will."

Will did. Still, he said, "Gentleman Death is not your responsibility anymore. You made him mine."

"I'll miss this place," Hannibal said when they stood together on the street, the cool night air drying the blood on their clothes.

Will heard sirens in the distance. Their distorted wail was growing louder. A neighbour must have reported the gunshots. Crawford would be found, Will's service pistol, his blood, Hannibal's. "I won't," he said.

"He would have killed you," Hannibal said, looking to Will as if to ask what he felt about it. Hannibal could have killed Crawford himself. Will likely couldn't have stopped him. The fact that he hadn't was only because it amused him not to, like it had amused him to spare Will. He might have chosen otherwise.

"So would you," Will said without rancour, not as an accusation but a simple statement of fact.

"I would have regretted the necessity," Hannibal replied and Will didn't doubt his sincerity, but neither did he doubt that Hannibal would have done it without hesitation.

"And now?"

"That is, as I said, entirely up to you," Hannibal said. "You've started down a path of transformation. Now that you've set foot upon it, there can be no going back to what you were. You must find a way forward."

"What am I becoming?" Will breathed the question at the core of his mind, almost unaware that he'd spoken aloud until Hannibal answered.

"Yourself, more fully."

Will gave a soft, humourless laugh, more breath than sound. "And you can show me the way?" Was this why Hannibal had risked so much to tie Will to him so inextricably? Was this what he had wanted all along? A companion? A protégé?

"No," Hannibal answered, surprising him. "Your path is your own. But I can walk beside you and help you clear the way."

"Where will we go?" Will asked. They couldn't stand forever in this quiet lamp-lit street.

"Forward," Hannibal said with a soft-eyed smile. "Wherever that takes us."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out the [gorgeous covers](http://amarriageoftrueminds.tumblr.com/post/151818166188/gentleman-death-by-xshiromorix-while) that [amarriageoftrueminds](http://archiveofourown.org/users/amarriageoftrueminds/pseuds/amarriageoftrueminds) made for this fic.


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